Submission screening

Submission screening is Formie’s unified layer for deciding whether a submission should be treated as legitimate before it is saved and dispatched. It runs in the submission workflow’s screen stage, immediately after field validation and before authorization, persistence, and notifications.

Screening combines captcha integrations (provider-backed challenges and token checks) with server-side spam rules so you can tune friction for real users while still blocking automated abuse.

How screening fits the workflow

For a normal submit request, Formie runs the screen stage in a fixed order:

1. screen.runCaptchaChecks — every captcha integration enabled for the form runs in turn. If a captcha fails validation, the submission is marked as spam with a clear reason and the captcha class is recorded for review.
2. screen.runSpamChecks — plugin-level rules such as spam keywords and IP matching are applied against the submission content.

That ordering means provider-backed checks run first, then broader text and network rules. Draft saves and non-submit actions skip this stage so editors and save-and-continue flows are not blocked by captchas or keyword lists.

For a deeper look at stages, tasks, and extension points, see Submission Workflow.

Captcha integrations

Captcha integrations cover everything from visible challenges to invisible tokens and third-party spam APIs that classify content without showing a puzzle.

Configure them under Formie → Settings → Integrations, then enable the ones you need per form. Provider-specific setup lives under Captchas in the integrations section of these docs.

Spam keywords and related settings

Spam keywords, IP lists, and related options live under Formie → Settings → Spam. They apply across forms after captcha checks, which keeps simple keyword blocking available even when you are not using a third-party provider.

Day-to-day behaviour of those settings (saving spam, user-visible responses, notifications) is described in Spam Protection.

Why a dedicated screening stage

Grouping captchas and spam rules in one workflow stage keeps behaviour predictable for custom code: validation errors surface in the validate stage, while spam and abuse signals are handled in screen. If you need to insert extra checks, you can register tasks before or after the built-in screening tasks without replacing the whole submission pipeline.