Docassemble

Docassemble is an open-source platform for building web-based “guided interviews” that ask users questions, apply rules/logic, and produce documents and outputs. It is widely used for legal aid and court forms, but can support any data-collection workflow that benefits from branching logic and document assembly.

Key Features

• Author interviews in YAML with Python code/hooks for complex logic and integrations
• Powerful branching logic (conditional questions, loops, validations, computations)
• Document generation using templates (e.g., DOCX) with automatic assembly from collected answers
• Web UI for running interviews, reviewing answers, and downloading generated documents
• Multi-user deployment with authentication options and role-based administration
• Package system for distributing/reusing interviews and components
• Background task processing for long-running jobs and integrations
• Internationalization support for multilingual interviews

Use Cases

• Court/self-help portals that guide users through forms and produce filings
• Legal aid intake and triage with eligibility logic and document outputs
• Any compliance or administrative workflow that requires structured Q&A and generated PDFs/DOCX

Limitations and Considerations

• Building non-trivial interviews typically requires comfort with YAML plus Python and templating
• Production deployments may require tuning multiple services (app, workers, database) for scale

Docassemble fits teams that need repeatable, logic-driven questionnaires and automated document assembly with full control over hosting and customization. Its interview/package model makes it practical to iterate on complex workflows and share reusable components across projects.