This replaces the whole template. It is the right tool for restructuring a layout — wrapping fields in columns, rewriting the HTML around them — and the wrong tool for anything field-shaped.
For adding, changing or removing a field, contact-form-7/add-form-field, update-form-field and remove-form-field each rewrite one tag and leave the rest of the markup byte for byte as it was.
At a glance
| Ability | contact-form-7/update-form-template |
| Toolset | Contact Form 7 — toolset/contact-form-7 |
| Group | Contact Form 7 › Fields & Template |
| Requires | Contact Form 7, active on the site |
| Capability | manage_options, plus edit_contact_forms |
| Safety | Writes data |
| Repeatable | Idempotent — running it twice leaves the same result |
| Ships in | AcrossAI Abilities Manager 0.0.34 and later |
What this can break
Any field not carried over into the new template is gone — and any mail template still referencing it keeps sending, with a blank line where the value used to be. Nothing in the admin flags that, and the visitor still sees a success message. Run contact-form-7/validate-mail-tags and contact-form-7/validate-form-config immediately afterwards.
How it works
The response returns the parsed fields of the new template alongside the raw markup, so you can compare what the form collects now against what it collected before without a second call.
It also re-runs Contact Form 7’s validator and returns the errors, which catches structural mistakes — a tag in the wrong place, a malformed option.
What neither of those catches is the mail-tag break. That needs contact-form-7/validate-mail-tags, because the mail template is a separate property that this call does not touch.
Input
| Name | Type | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
form_id | integer | Yes | Form post ID, as returned by contact-form-7/list-forms. |
template | string | Yes | The complete new template. |
What comes back
| Name | Type | What it is |
|---|---|---|
form_id | integer | The form that was written. |
template | string | The template as stored. |
fields | array | The parsed fields of the new template. |
config_errors | array | What Contact Form 7’s validator says now. |
success | boolean | Whether the call completed. |
message | string | A one-line summary of what happened, suitable for showing a human. |
error_code | string | Present only on failure — a stable machine-readable reason, such as a missing field, a wrong field type or an unmet confirmation. |
Example
Ask your assistant:
Rewrite form 42’s layout to put name and email side by side, keeping all the existing fields.
It resolves to one call:
{
"ability": "contact-form-7/update-form-template",
"parameters": {
"form_id": 42,
"template": "<div class=\"row\">\n <label>Your name [text* your-name]</label>\n <label>Your email [email* your-email]</label>\n</div>\n<label>Message [textarea your-message]</label>\n[submit \"Send\"]"
}
}Worth knowing
- Idempotent — writing the same template twice leaves the same form.
- Duplicate the form first. There are no revisions to fall back on.
- Prefer the field abilities for field changes; they cannot drop a field by omission.
- Always follow with
contact-form-7/validate-mail-tags. It is the only check that catches a notification quietly losing a value.
Related abilities
- Get Contact Form Template — read the current markup first
- Validate Contact Form Mail Tags — catch what this can break
- Duplicate Contact Form — take a copy before rewriting
Get the plugins:
AcrossAI Abilities Manager · AcrossAI MCP Manager
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