Building forms

Basic  Forms are how you ask clients anything: an intake questionnaire, a readiness survey, a weekly check-in. You build them once under Forms in the side rail, then reuse them with everyone.

1. Pick a form type

The Forms list has four tabs, one per kind of form: Intake & Onboarding, Progress Entry, Habit Tracking and General Forms. Open the tab for the kind you want and press New form. The Create New Form dialog asks for a name and the type, then offers Start from blank or a template (more on templates below).

2. Add & configure questions

Build the form from these eleven question types:

Every question also has: a title (the question), an optional description (help text, supports formatting), a Required toggle, and presentation layout and style overrides. There is no conditional logic or branching; forms are linear.

3. Turn answers into tracked metrics (“Map to”)

This is what makes a form more than a survey. On a general form, open the form’s settings and set its Special Purpose to Check-In Form or Initial Questionnaire. Each mappable question then gets a Map to metric dropdown: choose the metric that question feeds, and the client’s answer flows straight into their tracked progress. On an intake questionnaire the purpose is fixed and every question can map; the mapped sections show their whole mapping list in one place (next section).

3a. The intake questionnaire: sections with a role

An intake questionnaire is built from sections, and every section has a role. The role decides the ready-made questions a section starts with and which of them map to a metric:

A new intake starts with the first seven. In the editor the left pane lists the sections (drag to reorder, the questions follow), the centre shows the section exactly as the app renders it, and the right pane edits the selected section: its role, title, description and, for a mapped role, a Metric mapping list, 3 of 4 set, with the unmapped field marked Pick a metric both there and on the centre card. The rail’s Mapping tab lists every metric field on the whole form, unmapped ones first. Click any question card to edit that question; the arrow at the top of the right pane takes you back to its section.

The intake tab also lists older general forms whose special purpose is Initial Questionnaire; they keep their own editor and work as before.

You can map to any of these fields:

Custom fields, honestly: a Custom Field answer is saved on the entry as a question and an answer. That is good for tracking something one-off in writing, but it does not become a charted metric with a trend line. The mappable list above is what feeds the graphs.

Wearable prefill: for a handful of mapped fields (weight, body fat, BMI, VO₂ max, blood pressure, sleep, steps), if the client has a connected device, the check-in arrives pre-filled with the latest synced value, and they only confirm or overwrite it.

3b. Habit forms: the field is the habit

A habit form works differently, and the difference catches people out. It is not a page the client fills in and submits — it is the checklist their app draws. Each field you add becomes one row on their Log Daily Habits screen, and each row they tick is logged on its own.

So on a habit form there is no “map this answer to a metric” step, because the field and the habit are the same thing. Every field names a habit the client can log: Steps, Sleep hours, Water intake, No alcohol, Meditation and the rest, grouped as Nutrition, Exercise, Recovery & Sleep and Wellness.

There is no Info field here. It exists on check-in and general forms, where a display-only question makes sense. On a habit form there is nothing for the client to tick and nothing to log, so it is not offered. If you need a question in words — “any notes on today?” — that belongs on a check-in form, where it is saved with the rest of the answers.

Your own habits

The built-in list will not cover everything. Pick Custom habit (you define) as the field type and you can track something you named yourself: a number, a yes/no, or a rating out of ten.

Type the name in Display Name first, then open Which habit and choose Create “…” as a habit. Protocol works out what it stores from the input type you already picked, so a Yes/No question becomes a yes/no habit and a Rating becomes a rating. Add a unit — kg, hrs, minutes — and it shows beside the number on your client’s phone.

Once defined, a habit is yours to reuse: it appears in Which habit on every habit form you build, so two forms cannot end up meaning slightly different things by the same name.

Renaming is safe. Change a habit’s name whenever you like — “Morning readiness” to “Readiness” — and every day your client has already logged stays attached to it, streak included. The name is a label; the habit underneath does not move.

Retiring one takes it out of the list for new forms but keeps the history readable, so last month’s chart still makes sense. Re-adding a habit you retired brings the original back rather than starting a second one beside it.

Two habits that fill themselves in

Bodyweight is a real habit type, not a custom one. Your client taps it, types a number, and it also lands in their health data alongside anything their scale or watch syncs — so you are not left with two weights that disagree. A synced reading from a device wins over a typed one on the same day.

Session completed ticks itself. Protocol already knows whether your client trained, so logging a workout completes the habit for that day, and the row shows where the tick came from. Your client cannot tick it by hand, and that is the point: a streak they typed is a streak that means less than one the product watched them earn.

Pinned puts a habit on the client’s home screen for one-tap logging, without opening the habits screen. Pin the two or three that matter most; pinning everything defeats it.

If you opened an older habit form and see a field marked “will not appear on your client’s phone”, that is one saved before this rule existed. Change its field type to a real habit, or delete it and move the question to a check-in form. Until you do, it is invisible to the client — including if it was pinned.

4. Form settings

A form’s settings panel also lets you:

• Special Purpose is what this form is for: None, Check-In Form, Initial Questionnaire, Survey, or Other. Setting Check-In Form or Initial Questionnaire unlocks the Map-to dropdowns above. The purpose is also stamped onto every submission of the form, so each entry in a client’s history knows whether it was a check-in, an intake questionnaire, and so on.
• Show progress bar, for multi-page forms.
• Notify trainer on submit and Notify submitter on submit, two switches, plus a separate Notify Team Members on Submit section where you pick the individual people.
• AI Output, an optional prompt that turns the raw answers into a tidy summary. Enter a prompt and an Output Format appears: Plain Text, HTML or Markdown.

5. Start from a template

You do not have to start blank. Pick a template, a curated starter that is copied into a new, fully editable form of your own; editing your copy never touches the original. Built-in templates are grouped by category:

Templates are a head start, not something you save your own copies into. There is no “save as template”. Build your own forms and reuse them directly.

6. Put a form to work

• Make it a default. The Forms list has a switch on each row of the Intake, Progress Entry and Habit Tracking tabs. Set a form as your default onboarding form, check-in form or daily-habit form and it drives that flow in every client’s app; the default onboarding form is the one a new client is sent when you invite them. General forms have no default.
• Assign at onboarding. When you add a client, tick “Ask client to fill onboarding form” and pick the form. See Check-ins & progress tracking.
• Send it to one client. From a client’s record you can send any form on its own, covered in Onboarding a client and Form reminders and the check-in worklist.

Next: put forms to work as check-ins → Check-ins & progress tracking →