We Built an AI That Places Your Form Fields For You

The story of how we got tired of manual field placement and decided to teach a computer to do it instead. Spoiler: it worked.

By WayOfThat Team
··6 min read
aiautomationbehind-the-scenes

You know that feeling when you're doing something repetitive and your brain just screams "there HAS to be a better way"?

That's how this whole thing started.

The Problem We Got Tired Of

We were helping people digitize their document workflows—turning PDFs into interactive forms that people could fill out and sign online. Great idea, right?

Except there was this one massive bottleneck: every single PDF needed someone to manually place every single field.

Name field? Click, drag, resize. Address field? Click, drag, resize. 47 checkboxes? Click, drag, resize... 47 times.

It was soul-crushing. We watched people spend an hour setting up a form that would take 5 minutes to fill out. The math didn't math.

The "What If" Moment

Someone on our team said: "What if we could just... automatically detect where the fields should go?"

The room went quiet. Then someone else said: "Can we do that?"

Turns out, we could. And we did.

What We Built

Here's the simple version: we built a system that looks at your PDF and automatically identifies where form fields should go.

It scans your document and finds:

Text Fields Those blank lines where people write their name, address, email, etc. The AI looks for patterns that scream "someone should type here" and places a text field.

Checkboxes All those little squares that need checking. The system spots them and adds interactive checkboxes.

Signature Areas The "sign here" spots with or without the actual words "sign here." The AI picks up on visual cues that indicate "this needs a signature."

Date Fields Because dates show up everywhere in forms, and they deserve special treatment (validation, date pickers, etc.).

Auto-detection in action

How It Actually Works (Without Getting Too Technical)

We use computer vision—basically, we trained an AI model to recognize form field patterns the same way you'd recognize a stop sign or a friend's face.

The process:

  1. You upload a PDF
  2. We convert each page to an image
  3. The AI scans the image looking for field-like patterns
  4. It identifies what type each field is and where it should go
  5. Fields get placed automatically on the PDF
  6. You review and tweak as needed

The whole thing happens in seconds.

See it in action with a real document

The Best Part: You're Still in Control

Here's what we learned early on: perfect accuracy doesn't matter as much as massive time savings plus easy corrections.

The AI gets it right most of the time. But when it doesn't? You can:

  • Add fields it missed
  • Delete fields it hallucinated
  • Resize and reposition anything
  • Change field types
  • Set custom properties

Think of it as collaborative field placement. The AI does the grunt work, you do the final polish. Together, you're unstoppable. (Okay, that's dramatic, but you get it.)

Real-World Examples

The Ohio Disclosure Form Complex, multi-page, tons of checkboxes. Manual setup: ~90 minutes. With auto-detection: ~2 minutes.

Real Estate Purchase Agreement Multiple pages, mixed field types, lots of fine print. Manual setup: ~60 minutes. With auto-detection: ~3 minutes.

Simple One-Page Contract Just a few fields. Manual setup: ~10 minutes. With auto-detection: ~20 seconds.

Even on simple forms, it's faster. On complex forms, it's a game-changer.

What We Learned Building This

1. Consistency is harder than accuracy Forms are weird. Every designer has their own idea of what a checkbox should look like. Some use squares, some use circles, some use... abstract shapes that might be checkboxes?

The AI had to learn to spot all these variations. Which it did. Eventually.

2. Context matters A line under text might be a signature line. Or it might just be underlined text. The AI learned to look at surrounding context to make better guesses.

3. Good enough is actually good enough We obsessed over getting to 100% accuracy. Then we realized: if we get to 85% accuracy and save people 85% of their time, that's a massive win. Perfect is the enemy of shipped.

The Workflow It Enables

Here's what a typical document setup looks like now:

Multi-workflow visualization

  1. Upload - Drop your PDF
  2. Detect - AI scans and places fields (happens automatically)
  3. Review - Quick look to make sure everything's good
  4. Customize - Add your branding, tweak settings
  5. Deploy - Send it out for signatures

The whole thing takes minutes instead of hours.

Types of Forms This Works Best With

The Sweet Spot:

  • Government forms (they love their checkboxes)
  • Real estate documents (they love their disclosures)
  • Legal contracts (they love their fine print)
  • Business agreements (they love their signature lines)

Works, But Needs More Review:

  • Hand-drawn forms (inconsistent spacing)
  • Heavily designed forms (style over function)
  • Forms with unusual layouts (we're looking at you, creative designers)

Honestly Just Upload It: The worst case? The AI gets confused and you have to place a few fields manually. You're still no worse off than before. Best case? You save an hour. Risk/reward is heavily in your favor.

The Future of This Thing

We're constantly improving the AI. Every form that gets processed teaches it something new. Every manual correction someone makes helps it get smarter.

Some stuff we're working on:

  • Better handling of weird layouts
  • Smarter field type detection (knowing when a text field should actually be an email field)
  • Learning from corrections in real-time
  • Supporting more document types

Try It Yourself

We built this because we hated manual field placement. Turns out, lots of other people hate it too.

You can try it right now on our demo page:

  • Upload your own PDF
  • Use one of our sample documents
  • Paste a screenshot from your clipboard

No signup required. No credit card. No sales call. Just upload and watch it work.

Why We're Sharing This

Because manual field placement in 2025 is ridiculous. We built a solution that works for us, and if it helps other people save time, that's a win.

Plus, watching the AI work is kind of mesmerizing. There's something satisfying about seeing a blank PDF transform into an interactive form in real-time.

It's like one of those oddly satisfying videos, except at the end you have a usable form instead of just... a video of soap cutting or whatever.

Want to see it in action? Check out our demo or learn more about automatic field detection.

And if you're still manually placing fields after reading this... I respect your dedication to tradition, but also, why?

We Built an AI That Places Your Form Fields For You - WayOfThat