Automate data entry and form filling

What I mean by data entry

By data entry I mean putting data into a web form, the work some people call form filling. That data can come from a Google Sheet, Excel, or a webhook. It is the work of taking values from columns and rows and dropping each one into the right field. That field might be a text box, a date picker, or a file upload. All of it can be automated with a bot, and you can run it in the cloud. You can do it three ways, with no code, with code, or with a Claude skill. Let me show how I would go about it.

Who this is for

This is for anyone who does data entry into a web form all day. Entering orders into a portal, adding candidates to an ATS, keying invoices into a finance system, moving rows from a spreadsheet into a CRM one record at a time. The data sits in a Google Sheet, and the form has no API to reach it.

It is also for the coder who already writes Playwright or Puppeteer to fill forms, where the hybrid approach can cut the boilerplate. And for the people who just like automating things. I am one of them.

If you do the same data entry again and again with different values, a bot can take the sheet and do the typing, one row or ten thousand. If the data lives in a Sheet, in Excel, or arrives by webhook, and the form lives in Chrome, it can be automated, whether you code or not.

How I'd approach it

I'm a no-coder, so my approach leans no-code. Which is better for data entry? I would say no-code, and here is why.

The data can come from a lot of places. For most people it is a Google Sheet, and axiom integrates with that directly, along with Excel and webhooks. So the values are easy to feed in.

Plenty of forms are buried in iframes, and the no-code tool supports those too. And not to be totally biased, but sometimes you want a trick up your sleeve. A no-code step like key press lets me Tab between fields and come back to click a button. Forms are structured, so that works well here.

Code works too. I have done it and it is not that hard. The thing I ran into was dynamic forms that load in pieces, so I had to add a lot of waits by hand. The no-code tool has algorithms that handle that waiting for you. So yes, for data entry, my approach is no-code.

Automate data entry from a description

Describe the form in plain words in the Chrome extension and it builds the steps for you. Give it the fields and where each value comes from, then run it. Explore no-code. Note: Build from description is coming very soon. In the meantime you can still use the no-code builder.

Automate form filling in code

Build with code. If you are more interested in the infrastructure and running your own code, this is the right choice for you. Explore code

import { chromium } from "playwright";

const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(
  `wss://cdp-lb.axiom.ai/?token=${process.env.AXIOM_API_KEY}`
);

try {
  const context = browser.contexts()[0];
  const page = context.pages()[0] ?? await context.newPage();

  // 1. Log into the site once
  await page.goto("https://example.com/login");
  await page.fill("#email", process.env.SITE_EMAIL);
  await page.fill("#password", process.env.SITE_PASSWORD);
  await page.click("button[type=submit]");

  // 2. Each row would come from your Google Sheet
  const rows = [
    { name: "Ada Lovelace", email: "ada@example.com", plan: "Pro",  file: "contracts/ada.pdf" },
    { name: "Alan Turing",  email: "alan@example.com", plan: "Team", file: "contracts/alan.pdf" },
  ];

  for (const row of rows) {
    // 3. Open a fresh form for each record
    await page.goto("https://example.com/records/new");
    await page.waitForSelector("#name");

    // 4. Fill the text fields
    await page.fill("#name", row.name);
    await page.fill("#email", row.email);

    // 5. Choose from a dropdown
    await page.selectOption("#plan", row.plan);

    // 6. Upload a file
    await page.setInputFiles("#contract", row.file);

    // 7. Submit, then wait for the confirmation before the next row
    await page.click("button[type=submit]");
    await page.waitForSelector(".confirmation");
  }
} finally {
  await browser.close();
}

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Build with a Claude skill

Build no-code or code bots with a skill.

Add the Claude skill and describe the form. It builds the bot for you, no-code or code, and handles the tricky parts like dynamic fields, dropdowns, and waits.

Install the skillLearn more

What can you automate?

Most forms can be filled by a bot. A couple of cases worth knowing first.

What I'd watch out for

The range of forms out there is broad, so the use cases are broad too. I won't pretend it is all easy. Forms hide surprises, and a learning curve is real. Here is what I would watch for.

Data in the wrong field

If you see a value land in the wrong place, a color in the price field for example, the selector is wrong or it picked the wrong element. You can fix it in the no-code tool with the selector tool, or directly in your code.

Long forms with many steps

Break a long form into several axioms, one per page, then load them into a single controller axiom that runs each one in order with the run another axiom step.

Cookies

If you log into a site, you either have the run sign in each time, or you store the cookies so the session carries over. Storing the cookies is the method we recommend.

Iframes

Forms in legacy systems are often embedded in iframes. We have a mode to handle that, turn it on in the selector tool. If that does not work, inspect the page and check whether the iframe has a URL you can open to reach the form directly.