Simulator Smart Forms

Simulator.Company Smart Form Author

You are a specialist in creating and editing Smart Forms (also called CDU, Script, or Application) on the Simulator.Company platform, using the simulator MCP server plus the pullSmartForm / pushSmartForm engine tools.

Core Concepts

A Smart Form is three things in one:

A Smart Form is not a data-schema form. Compare:

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Regular Form (template)        Smart Form (actor + app)
──────────────────────         ───────────────────────
defines field schema           is itself an actor in "scripts" form
actors are instances of it     carries pages/styles/i18n as versioned files
account definitions            Corezoid process supplies runtime data

Environments

Every Smart Form always has exactly two environments:

Rule: never write directly to production. Edit develop, then deploy develop → production via a release. The server rejects writes to readonly envs.

Project File Structure

After pullSmartForm the local directory looks like:

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<actorId>/
  develop/
    .manifest.json              ← file IDs + SHA-256 hashes (used by pushSmartForm)
    pages/
      index/
        config                  ← Page layout (JSON): { grid, forms[] }
        locale                  ← Page-scoped i18n (JSON): { key: { en: "…", uk: "…" } }
    locale                      ← App-wide i18n (JSON)
    viewModel                   ← Default view-model values (JSON)
    widgets                     ← Widget/control settings (JSON, ctrlSettings)
    definitions/
      button                    ← Reusable component fragment (JSON), used via "$ref": "#/button"
    styles/
      index                     ← Less stylesheet (text/css); compiled → scoped CSS at serve time
  production/
    .manifest.json
    … (same tree, read-only)

File roles

Standard Workflow

Creating a new Smart Form

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createSmartForm(title="My App", ref="my-app")
→ { actorId: "...", envs: [{id: 1, title: "develop"}, {id: 2, title: "production"}] }

corezoidCredentials is optional — omit it for static/design-only forms and configure the Corezoid binding later.

Then immediately pull the default skeleton:

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pullSmartForm(actorId="<uuid>")
→ downloads all envs to <actorId>/develop/ and <actorId>/production/

Edit cycle (existing or newly created form)

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1.  pullSmartForm(actorId="<uuid>")
    → downloads all envs to <actorId>/develop/ and <actorId>/production/
    → writes .manifest.json (file IDs + hashes) in each env dir

2.  Edit files under <actorId>/develop/
    (page config, locale, viewModel, styles, definitions)

3.  pushSmartForm(actorId="<uuid>")
    → walks <actorId>/develop/, diffs every file/folder against .manifest.json
    → validates new + changed files against the CDU page protocol schema
    → audits the WHOLE tree for cross-file token defects (see below)
    → if errors: aborts with { validationErrors: [...] } — fix and retry
    → POSTs new folders (parents first) and new files, then PUTs modified files
    → updates .manifest.json with returned ids + content hashes
    → returns { created: { folders, files }, updated, unchanged, orphanFiles, warnings? }

4.  Deploy (when ready to publish):
    deploySmartForm(actorId="<uuid>")
    → deploys develop → production; returns { releaseId, releaseNumber, status }

The cross-file token audit (validationErrors vs warnings)

Per-file schema validation cannot see whether a [[key]] resolves or a {{key}} has a default — those need the locale and viewModel files alongside the page. pushSmartForm therefore also audits the whole env tree (not just the files being written: deleting a viewModel default breaks an untouched page). The split follows what the runtime can still rescue:

A templated contentLoop ("contentLoop": "{{promos_loop}}") is backend-filled, so the placeholders inside its content template are not viewModel keys and are never reported. Only content is loop-scoped — the section's own fields (title, visibility, …) are ordinary viewModel placeholders. regexp and mask are skipped entirely: a character class such as ^[[:alpha:]]+$ is pattern syntax, not a [[locale]] token.

Page Config Format (pages/<id>/config)

The page config is the layout template. Structure: Page → Grid → Form → Section → Item.

Minimal page

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{
  "grid": {
    "type": "one_column",
    "components": {
      "center": ["main"]
    }
  },
  "forms": [
    {
      "id": "main",
      "title": "My Form",
      "sections": [
        {
          "id": "body",
          "type": "body",
          "content": [
            {
              "id": "greeting",
              "class": "label",
              "value": "[[hello]]"
            },
            {
              "id": "name",
              "class": "edit",
              "value": "{{defaultName}}",
              "type": "text",
              "placeholder": "Enter your name",
              "required": true
            },
            {
              "id": "submit",
              "class": "button",
              "title": "Submit",
              "type": "default"
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Page (root of config)

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{
  "title": "My orders",        // browser tab title; see below
  "grid":  { /* layout */ },
  "forms": [ /* content */ ],
  "language": "uk",            // base locale for [[…]] and date formatting
  "styleClass": "orders-page",
  "query": { "ref": "{{ref}}" },
  "notifications": [ /* shown when the page opens */ ],
  "extra": { "showScrollToTop": true, "focusVisible": true }
}

title names the browser tab. Omit it and the tab is named by the host application — <page> - <script ref>, or the script ref alone on the index page. A Smart Form embedded into another screen (a modal, a section header) never renames the browser tab, whether a title is set or not.

extra flags (booleans, default false): showScrollToTop adds a scroll-to-top button, focusVisible shows a keyboard focus ring.

A whole value may be a placeholder. query, notifications and extra are resolved server-side, so any of them can be written as a single {{viewModel}} or [[locale]] token and arrive as an object or an array:

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"query":         "{{query}}",      // → object
"notifications": "{{messages}}",   // → array
"extra":         "{{pageExtra}}"   // → object

The token has to be the entire string — with text around it the result is always a string. The same holds inside grid.header, where every nested key is resolved ("extra": { "steps": "{{steps}}" }).

Not everything is resolved, and a placeholder written in the wrong place is silently left as literal text: grid.type, grid.styleClass, grid.sideBar, grid.header.class and the keys inside a page-level extra are all taken as written.

Grid

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{
  "type": "one_column" | "two_column",
  "header": {
    "class": "default" | "steps",
    "extra": { "steps": ["Step 1", "Step 2"], "active": 1 }
  },
  "components": {
    "header":  ["<formId>"],
    "left":    ["<formId>"],
    "center":  ["<formId>"],
    "right":   ["<formId>"],
    "footer":  ["<formId>"],
    "sidebar": ["<formId>"]
  },
  "styleClass": "custom-grid"
}

Form

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{
  "id": "info",
  "title": "Details",
  "styleClass": "card",
  "visibility": "visible",    // "visible" | "disabled" | "hidden"
  "sections": [ /* Section[] */ ]
}

Section

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{
  "id": "s1",
  "type": "body",             // "body" | "block" | "modal" | "float"
  "visibility": "visible",
  "header":  [ /* Item[] — Label | Button only */ ],
  "content": [ /* Item[] — the main items */ ]
  // modal-only: "modalHeader": [ /* Item[] */ ],
  //             "modalSize": "small"|"medium"|"large"|"xlarge",
  //             "modalCloseConfirmText": "…"
}

block renders as a grouped card; modal/float are overlays.

⚠️ A section has no footer — only header and content (plus modalHeader for modals). Put bottom-of-form actions as the last items in content, or in a separate form bound to the grid's footer region. (The grid's components.footer above holds form ids, not items.)

Component Catalogue

Every item has class + base fields (id, value, visibility, required, error, errorMsg, styleClass, row, w). Below are the most common components:

Layout/rendering gotchas (verified live — full list in docs/user-flows/cdu-page-protocol.md §12): row renders as a CSS table so its items do not wrap (use display:inline-block items directly in content for a wrapping grid); styleClass on a row is dropped from the DOM (style leaf items, not the row); a radio/select option dot is a JSS-hashed <i class="i-icon-…"> (not the <input>) — restylable via [class*="icon"]/[class*="content"] (match by substring; the i- prefix isn't stable across builds) but that couples to renderer internals, so buttons are the version-proof alternative for card pickers; and a field with visibility:"visible" but hidden via CSS still submits (the idiomatic hidden value carrier).

Input components

Display components

Action components

Data & navigation components

value, never id, is the key in an option or column list — table.head[], tab.options[], stepper.options[]. Cells of a table row live in body[].options[], not as direct row properties. The wrong shape passes the server and fails only in the browser ("head[0].id" is not allowed); see cdu-page-protocol.md §5.1 and §10.1.

File components

Layout

Do not hand-author a row component. Lay items out with the base row / w fields that every component carries: give sibling items the same row string to place them on one line, and set w (relative weight — rendered width is w / Σw of the row) on each. The renderer synthesizes a row component from them. For drag-reorder use a section with sortable: true + contentLoop (there is also a standalone draggable component, but the section route is the usual one). row and draggable are absent from the Scripts swagger, so prefer these field-based paths.

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// two items on one line, 50% each (equal weights → each gets half the row):
{ "id": "first", "class": "edit", "type": "text", "row": "1", "w": "50" }
{ "id": "last",  "class": "edit", "type": "text", "row": "1", "w": "50" }

Embedded widgets

class: "widget" — type: iframe onfido twilio amazonConnect webComments. Each type has its own extra schema.

Templating

All substitution is server-side — the renderer receives concrete values.

⚠️ Visibility may be a view-model placeholder — but nothing else about it is reactive. Form, section, and rendered-item visibility (in header, modalHeader, and content) may be a pure view-model placeholder such as "{{graphPreviewVisibility}}"; the server resolves it to visible|disabled|hidden before the page reaches the client. Malformed or embedded forms ("state-{{x}}", "{{ x }}", a bare enum typo) are rejected at push, and footer is not server-rendered so a placeholder there is rejected too. This is initial/server-render binding, not a client-side expression: to reveal one field after another changes, use submitOnChange plus a 200 changes response.

⚠️ A label value may never be the empty string (nor an image an empty src) — the renderer rejects both. Use a non-breaking space for a blank-looking label. For an image use a fetchable http(s) placeholder URL (or an actor-attached asset): image.value is loaded through the /api/1.0/image?src= proxy, which rejects a data: URI with 400 "URL is not allowed".

locale file format

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{
  "hello": { "en": "Hello", "uk": "Привіт" },
  "submit": { "en": "Submit", "uk": "Надіслати" }
}

viewModel file format

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{
  "defaultName": "Anonymous",
  "maxItems": 10
}

definitions fragment format

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{
  "class": "button",
  "title": "[[submit]]",
  "type": "default"
}

Used in config as { "$ref": "#/button" } — the whole object is replaced.

Change Protocol (POST 200 response)

When Corezoid returns code: 200, the server sends changes[] — surgical patches to the live page without a full re-render:

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[
  {
    "id": "name",             // item / section / form id
    "class": "edit",          // component class (for item changes)
    "value": "Alice",
    "visibility": "visible",
    "error": false,
    "required": true
  },
  {
    "id": "status",
    "options": [{"id":"a","title":"Active"},{"id":"i","title":"Inactive"}],
    "changeRules": {
      "options": { "action": "replace" }   // concat | unshift | delete | replace | merge
    }
  }
]

code: 205 → re-render a whole page (can switch to a different pageId). code: 302 → redirect to nextPage.

Creating a Smart Form from Scratch

Use the createSmartForm MCP tool — it calls POST /papi/1.0/applications/<accId> internally and returns the actor ID plus both env IDs ready for use.

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createSmartForm(
  title="My App",
  ref="my-app",
  description="Optional",          // optional
  sharedWith="userList",            // optional, default userList
  apiLogin="...",                   // optional — set Corezoid binding later if omitted
  apiSecret="...",
  procId="...",
  companyId="..."
)
→ { actorId: "...", ref: "my-app", title: "My App",
    envs: [{ id: 12, title: "develop", readonly: false },
           { id: 13, title: "production", readonly: true }],
    next: "run pullSmartForm(actorId=...) to download the initial file tree" }

sharedWith values: userList | allWorkspaceUsers | allRegisteredUsers | anyone.

Corezoid credentials are optional at creation time and can be configured later.

After creation always run pullSmartForm to download the default file skeleton before editing.

Working with Releases

Deploy develop → production

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deploySmartForm(actorId="<uuid>")
→ { actorId, sourceEnv: "develop", targetEnv: "production",
    releaseId, releaseNumber, status: "active" }

sourceEnv and targetEnv default to develop and production; pass them explicitly to deploy between non-standard envs.

List releases

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listReleases(actorId="<uuid>")           // production releases (default)
listReleases(actorId="<uuid>", env="develop")
→ { actorId, env, releases: [{ id, release_number, status, created_at, … }] }

Diff two releases

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diffReleases(actorId="<uuid>", releaseId="5", vsReleaseId="3")
→ { added[], removed[], modified[] }

Compared by source_hash — no file bytes transferred. Use before a rollback to preview what will change.

Rollback to a previous release

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rollbackRelease(actorId="<uuid>", releaseId="3")
→ { actorId, rolledBackTo: "3", newReleaseId, releaseNumber, status: "active" }

Rollback is forward-only: a new active release is created whose content equals the target release. History is never rewritten.

Retention: 5 releases per env (objects). Older release manifests remain for audit; only objects are GC'd. A release outside the 5-release window cannot be rolled back.

File History

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// List versions of a file (fileId from .manifest.json)
getFileHistory(actorId="<uuid>", fileId=12345)
getFileHistory(actorId="<uuid>", fileId=12345, limit=20, offset=0)
→ list of { versionId, operation, createdAt, … }

// Fetch source of a specific version
getFileVersion(actorId="<uuid>", fileId=12345, versionId="<id>")
→ { source: "…full file content…" }

// Restore file to a prior version (creates a new version; run pullSmartForm to refresh local)
rollbackFile(actorId="<uuid>", fileId=12345, versionId="<id>")

// List soft-deleted objects in an env
listTrash(actorId="<uuid>")              // develop (default)
listTrash(actorId="<uuid>", env="production")
→ list of { objectId, title, objType, deletedAt, … }

// Restore a deleted object
restoreFromTrash(actorId="<uuid>", objectId="<id>")

All writes create a before-state history row (operation: create|update|move|rename|delete). Retention: 50 versions per file.

Key Rules for Authoring

1. Edit only develop — the server rejects writes to production (readonly env).
2. Run pullSmartForm before editing — establishes .manifest.json needed by pushSmartForm.
3. Server stores source opaque — no structural validation of config, viewModel, or locale JSON at save time. Validate page JSON against the CDU protocol before pushing.
4. Missing $ref resolves to {} — a definitions/button reference to a non-existent fragment silently produces an empty object at serve time. Always verify definition names.
5. System files are protected — is_system files (styles/index, pages/index/config, etc.) cannot be renamed or deleted. Edit their content freely; rename/delete will fail.
6. CSS is Less — styles/index is compiled with Less at serve time, wrapped in .cdu-page {}. Use Less syntax; @import "pages/<id>/style" imports page-level stylesheets.
7. Dynamic data comes from Corezoid — the Smart Form files define layout and defaults; Corezoid processes supply runtime viewModel values and control flow (code 200/205/302).
8. Deploy is a two-phase snapshot — T1 locks the target env and takes a snapshot; T2 materialises it. A failed T2 is compensated automatically.

Typical Session Example

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// 1. Pull all files to develop/
pullSmartForm(actorId="69bbd03e-0d4c-4122-9234-e06ffe9ca1eb")
→ { envs: [{ env: "develop", dir: "…/develop", files: 11 }, { env: "production", … }] }

// 2. Edit pages/index/config — add a new label item to the body section

// 3. Push changes (also creates new pages/folders if you added them locally)
pushSmartForm(actorId="69bbd03e-0d4c-4122-9234-e06ffe9ca1eb")
→ { created: { folders: 0, files: 0 }, updated: 1, unchanged: 10, orphanFiles: [] }

// Adding a new page? Just create the files locally and push:
//   develop/pages/survey/config   (page layout JSON)
//   develop/pages/survey/locale   (page i18n JSON)
// → pushSmartForm POSTs the "survey" folder, then both files inside it,
//   then writes their ids back into .manifest.json. No PUT/PATCH needed.

// 4. Deploy to production
deploySmartForm(actorId="69bbd03e-0d4c-4122-9234-e06ffe9ca1eb")
→ { releaseId: 5, releaseNumber: 3, status: "active" }

Embedding a Smart Form into an actor or a reaction

A Smart Form is an actor — but you can also embed and run it inside another actor's card or inside a reaction, so the smart form shows up where the user is working:

• In a regular actor: set appId = the Smart Form actor id on createActor / updateActor; the actor's card then renders/runs that smart form. appSettings tunes it: { autorun:boolean, expired:int (unix s), users:int[], groups:int[], fullWidth:boolean } (or null).

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  updateActor(formId=<f>, actorId="<actorId>",
              appId="<smartFormActorId>", appSettings={ "autorun": true })
  

• In a reaction: same appId / appSettings on createReaction / updateReaction — the reaction renders the smart form (e.g. drop an interactive form into a discussion thread).

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  createReaction(type="comment", actorId="<actor>", appId="<smartFormActorId>",
                 appSettings={ "fullWidth": true })
  

• The embedded form's pages/logic come from the Smart Form's production env by default; edit them with the pull/push cycle above.

Also see simulator-reactions (the appId + extra.linkedActorId + [application=…] chip) and docs/entities/reactions.md → "Embedding".

Access & Scopes (Public API)

All Smart Form operations use the public API (/papi/1.0/...) with an OAuth2 bearer token.

pullSmartForm and pushSmartForm both require actors.management scope.

Styling (hand-off)

This skill covers page structure — pages, locale, viewModel defaults, and the layout JSON (grid/forms/sections/items) plus the styleClass hooks you attach to them. It does not author the CSS/Less itself. When the user wants to style / restyle / theme a Smart Form — write the style / styles/ layer, re-skin a component, build a design system, fix spacing/colors/fonts — switch to the simulator-styles skill. It reuses the same pull/push/deploy cycle and consumes the styleClass hooks defined here.

Adding Backend Logic

For the backend that produces dynamic viewModel values, handles /send submits, and mutates the page via changes[], switch to the simulator-smart-forms-logic skill. It is a brief generator: it translates the user's intent into prompts for the Corezoid plugin's corezoid-create / corezoid-edit skills, and binds the resulting bound process to the Smart Form env via corezoidCredentials / procId.

Reference Documents