OpenForm is documents as code. It lets developers and AI agents define, validate, and render business documents using typed, composable schemas. This eliminates template drift, broken mappings, and brittle glue code — while giving AI systems a reliable document layer they can safely read, reason over, and generate against in production workflows.

Package overview

Renders OpenForm documents to text-based formats including plain text, Markdown, and HTML with automatic field type detection and serialization.

• Automatic field serialization - Detects field types (Money, Person, Phone, Address, Organization) from form schema and automatically formats them
• Multiple output formats - Supports any text-based format: plain text, Markdown, HTML, or custom formats
• Template-based rendering - Use Handlebars templates for dynamic text generation
• Custom serializers - Use locale-specific or custom serializer registries for formatting
• Type-safe - Full TypeScript support with OpenForm core types

Installation

npm install @open-form/renderer-text

Usage

Method 1: Direct rendering with renderText()

Render templates directly using the exported renderText function:

import { renderText } from "@open-form/renderer-text";
import { leaseForm } from "./forms/lease-agreement";

const output = renderText({
  template: `
# Lease Agreement

**Tenant:** {{tenantName}}
**Monthly Rent:** {{monthlyRent}}
  `,
  data: {
    tenantName: {
      firstName: "Sarah",
      lastName: "Johnson",
      fullName: "Sarah Johnson",
    },
    monthlyRent: {
      amount: 1500,
      currency: "USD",
    },
  },
  form: leaseForm, // Automatic field type detection and serialization
});

console.log(output);
// Renders with automatic formatting:
// **Tenant:** Sarah Johnson
// **Monthly Rent:** $1,500.00

renderText() Parameters:

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | | ------------- | ------------------------- | -------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | template | string | Yes | Handlebars template string | | data | Record<string, unknown> | Yes | Data object to populate the template | | form | Form | No | Form schema for automatic field type detection and serialization | | serializers | SerializerRegistry | No | Custom serializer registry (defaults to USA serializers) |

Returns: string - The rendered output

Method 2: Use textRenderer as plug-in to Form instance render method:

Render forms using the OpenForm builder pattern:

import { open } from "@open-form/sdk";
import { textRenderer } from "@open-form/renderer-text";

const leaseForm = open.form({
  // form defnition...
});

const output = await leaseForm
  .fill({
    fields: {
      tenantName: {
        firstName: "Sarah",
        lastName: "Johnson",
        fullName: "Sarah Johnson",
      },
      monthlyRent: {
        amount: 1500,
        currency: "USD",
      },
    },
  })
  .render({
    renderer: textRenderer(), // <-- plug in textRenderer
    layer: "markdown",
    resolver, // File resolver for loading template layers
  });

console.log(output);
// Renders with automatic formatting applied

textRenderer() Options:

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | | ------------- | -------------------- | -------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | | serializers | SerializerRegistry | No | Custom serializer registry (defaults to USA serializers) |

Changelog

View the Changelog for updates.

Related packages

• @open-form/serialization - Field type detection and serialization utilities
• @open-form/sdk - OpenForm framework SDK
• @open-form/renderers - All renderers in one package

Contributing

We're open to all community contributions! If you'd like to contribute in any way, please read our contribution guidelines and code of conduct.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license.

See LICENSE for more information.

Acknowledgments

Built with these excellent libraries:

• Handlebars - Minimal templating on steroids