Stencils

Stencils are reusable starter forms.

They are useful when you want a faster, more consistent starting point than building every new form from scratch. A stencil can carry the same kinds of structure and setup you would normally define on a form, including fields and layout, pages, notifications, and form settings.

That means a stencil is more than a visual starting point. It can carry real behavior with it as well.

When to use stencils

Stencils are especially helpful when:

• a team creates the same kinds of forms repeatedly
• clients need a safe starting point
• you want to keep common patterns consistent across projects

Formie includes a default Contact Form stencil as a general starting point, and you can create your own when you need something more specific.

Creating and using stencils

You can create and manage stencils in Formie → Settings → Stencils. Building a stencil works much like building a normal form, so you can define the layout, notifications, and form settings you want to reuse.

Once a stencil exists, it becomes an option when creating a new form. Choosing a stencil gives you a quick starting point, and from there the form becomes its own form that can be changed independently.

Shared starting points

Stencils are best treated as starting templates, not shared live forms. Changes made to a stencil affect future forms created from it, not forms that already exist.

Stencils are also stored in project config, which makes them useful for keeping standard starting points available across environments and across a team.