Show HN: Filling PDF forms with AI using client-side tool calling

(copilot.simplepdf.com)

22 points | by nip 3 hours ago

9 comments

  • tyingq 4 minutes ago
    It is cool, but the demo is flawed, right at the second field:

      What's the business name/disregarded entity name, if different from above (line 2)?
    
    As far as I can tell, no way to skip this, leave it empty, not even "use a space". And that field would be empty for many or most.
    • nip 0 minutes ago
      Have you tried telling the LLM to just skip the field and move to the next one?

      I tried with various: "Skip it", "None, leave blank", "Skip this field" and all worked for me, but if may very well be missing something very obvious?

  • nilirl 21 minutes ago
    One thing I've struggled with before is building a collection of data models based off of a collection of PDF forms.

    I wanted to abstract away the PDF form building my own html form on top of a data model that can later be used to programmatically fill the PDF .

    Since I had 100s of PDFs, I wanted an OCR+LLM pipeline to build a data model for each PDF. Unfortunately, OCR + LLM works ~90% of the time but sometimes fields are missed or mislabeled in the data model.

    Does this sometimes get it wrong during programmatic filling? How do you deal with that?

    • nip 6 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • iamflimflam1 2 hours ago
    Might be worth making it clearer that the chat messages are going to a remote server. So any PII data is leaving the local machine.
    • nip 2 hours ago
      I tried to make it clear with the popup message that appears when you start chatting: "Public demo. Use sample data only. Messages are processed by the selected AI provider."

      But you're right that it's not as evident as I wanted to, I'm making a small copy update to make it clearer: "Public demo. Your chat messages leave your device and are sent to the selected AI provider. Use sample data only."

      (Since there's support for local models, the popup is only displayed when NOT using your own model)

      Thanks!

      EDIT: the copy update is live, thanks again!

  • grahammccain 2 hours ago
    Keep going though. I’m definitely looking for something like this once we can get something secure we can use with proprietary and pii data.
  • nip 3 hours ago
    Just to be clear, this is a technical demo showing what's possible with client-side tool calling + local models: LLM-assisted form filling where no document data has to leave the user's machine.

    Use cases range from:

    - Filling foreign-language forms

    - Navigating a contract before signing: "can I trust ALL the clauses here?"

    - Pre-filling repetitive forms from existing data sources (CRM, EHR, etc. via MCP/RAG)

    Copilot is designed to be embedded; our customers ship it white-labeled inside their own products.

  • simianwords 51 minutes ago
    It looks cool but, how is this different from me uploading to chatgpt and asking it to fill in?
    • nip 32 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • kiney 53 minutes ago
    Does it support XFA forms?
    • nip 47 minutes ago
      Hey Kiney!

      It supports AcroForms (like in the example) but not XFA.

      Why are you asking? gov forms support?

  • ajaystream 31 minutes ago
    [flagged]
  • lyrie 1 hour ago
    [dead]