An AI agent that fills out forms

Supplier onboarding, vendor portals, applications, registrations, the same twelve fields on twenty sites — forms are most of the tedious work on the web, and most of where agents quietly fail. Here is what filling one reliably actually takes.

A form looks like the easiest job you could give a machine: fields, values, a submit button. In practice it is where a lot of agents fall over, because a real form is not a list of fields. It is a multi-step, stateful, often logged-in web application with validation, conditional sections, file uploads, a CAPTCHA at the end, and consequences on the other side of the button.

The difference between an agent that can "fill out forms" in a demo and one you would let submit a vendor application is almost entirely about the four things below.

What filling a form reliably requires

1. A real browser, driven like a person drives it

Modern forms are built with the assumption that a person is in a browser: dropdowns that load their options on click, date pickers, address fields that autocomplete, sections that only appear after an earlier answer, uploads that need a real file dialog. An agent that posts a payload to the form's endpoint skips all of that and usually gets rejected or, worse, accepted with half the data. An agent that operates a genuine browser — clicking, typing, waiting for the next section — fills the form the way it was designed to be filled.

2. The data, already on hand

Most of the time in a form is not typing; it is finding what to type. Your VAT number, the bank details, the certificate PDF, the address in the exact format this site wants. An agent with a persistent machine keeps that material on its own desk — the documents you dropped on it last month are still there — instead of asking you for the same things every time. That is the difference between "fill in this form" being a thirty-second instruction and a twenty-minute conversation.

3. A human for the fields a machine should never guess

Some fields are not data-entry; they are decisions or consent. The signature. The "I agree" on terms you have not read. The field where the honest answer depends on judgment. A good agent treats those as stop points: it fills everything it can, then hands you the keyboard on its own screen for the parts that are yours, and carries on after you hand it back. The same handover covers the CAPTCHA and the login — the moments a site is specifically checking for a person.

4. Watching the submit

The submit button is where the cost of a mistake lives. The right design is that you can see the completed form on the agent's screen before it presses the button — and press it yourself if the form matters. On MyClawn the agent's desktop is streamed live to your browser and you can take over at any moment; for the first few forms of any kind, that is exactly what you do. You can watch a recorded run to see the shape of it.

Three kinds of form, three different answers

• Repetitive registrations and applications — the same company details into the twentieth supplier portal. The best case for an agent: the data is fixed, the value is in not doing it yourself, and the risk is low if you review before submit.
• Forms behind a login — support tickets, order changes, back-office updates. Fine, with the agent logged in on its own persistent machine (see an agent that logs into websites) and a human at the submit for anything that changes money or commitments.
• Forms with legal or financial weight — tax filings, contracts, anything signed. Let the agent gather and pre-fill; do not let it submit. The point of a watchable agent is that this line is easy to hold: it stops, you look, you press.

What still breaks

• Validation you cannot see. Some forms reject silently, or accept and then email you a rejection. Verify against the confirmation page or the record on the other side, not the agent's report that it "submitted".
• Ambiguous fields. "Reference number" means something different on every site. An agent will guess plausibly; tell it what you mean, or make it ask.
• Sites that block automation outright. A real browser passes most checks. Some services still forbid automated submission in their terms; for those, pre-fill and let a person submit.

Where this is the wrong tool

A one-off form you will fill in ninety seconds is faster to do than to explain. A form you fill every week, across many sites, from the same set of documents, is the case — and it gets better the longer the agent's machine keeps your material and your logins. Read how sessions and the take-over work in Security & trust.