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

Create and manage stencils under Formie → Stencils (requires the Access stencils permission). Building a stencil works much like building a normal form, so you can define the layout, notifications, and form settings you want to reuse.

Choose New stencil to create one you can edit in the control panel. 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.

Saving a form as a stencil from the form builder creates a new stencil you can edit later.

Synced fields

Stencils can include synced fields—the same shared field definitions you use across forms.

When you add an existing field as a synced field while building a stencil, Formie remembers that link in the stencil snapshot. Creating a new form from that stencil adds a new placement that points at the same shared definition, so your site-wide email, consent, or other shared fields stay consistent.

If a shared definition cannot be found on the current environment (for example, a project stencil references a handle that does not exist yet), Formie falls back to creating an independent field copy from the stencil settings.

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.

Project stencils (developers)

Some stencils are created as project stencils and stored in project config (formie.stencils). They are useful for starter kits and defaults that should be versioned with the site and shared across a team.

Handles must be unique across both regular and project stencils.

On sites where admin changes are disabled, project stencils are view-only in the control panel. You can still open them and use Save a copy to create an editable stencil of your own.

• New stencil — available to everyone with stencil access.
• New project stencil — only when admin changes are enabled (typically local or staging).