Web forms exist to put information from people into databases. The input fields and formatting rules in online forms are there to make sure the information fits the structure a database needs. But unstructured input in AI-enabled applications means machines, instead of humans, can do this work.

17 years ago, I wrote a book on Web Form Design that started with "Forms suck." Fast forward to today and the sentiment still holds true. No one likes filling in forms but forms remain ubiquitous because they force people to provide information in the way it's stored within the database of an application. You know the drill: First Name, Last Name, Address Line 2, State abbreviation, and so on.

With Web forms, the burden is on people to adapt to databases. Today's AI models, however, can flip this requirement. That is, they allow people to provide information in whatever form they like and use AI do the work necessary to put that information into the right structure for a database.

How does this work? Instead of a Web form enforcing the database's input requirements a dynamic context system can handle it. One way of doing this is with AgentDB's templating system, which provides instructions to AI models for reading and writing information to a database.

With AgentDB connected to an AI model (via an MCP server), a person can simply say "add this" and provide an image, PDF, audio, video, you name it. The model will use AgentDB's template to decide what information to extract from this unstructured input and how to format it for the database. In the case where something is missing or incomplete, the model can ask for clarification or use tools (like search) to find possible answers.

In the example above, I upload a screenshot from Instagram announcing a concert and ask the AI model to add it to my concert tracker. The AgentDB template tells the model it needs Show, Date, Venue, City, Time, and Ticket Price for each database entry. So the AI model pulls this information from the unstructured input (image) and, if complete, turns it into the structured format a database needs.

No Web form required. And no form is the best kind of Web Form Design.