Pulley used Anvil's embedded builders and AI to enable customers to templatize their own forms for permit applications and send them for signature via Etch E-sign API.
The Company
Pulley operates in the construction permitting space, helping developers and architects at retail companies navigate the complex process of applying for permits across different jurisdictions. Construction projects require numerous permits—building permits, electrical permits, plumbing permits, zoning approvals—and each jurisdiction (city, county, or state) has its own forms, requirements, and processes. Pulley streamlines this complexity, allowing construction professionals to manage permit applications more efficiently.
The Problem
Construction permitting is notoriously fragmented. Every municipality has different permit application forms. A developer working across multiple locations faces dozens of unique forms, each with specific fields, formatting requirements, and documentation needs. Keeping track of which forms are needed for which jurisdictions and manually filling out each one creates substantial administrative overhead.
When Pulley launched a self-serve product to expand their reach, they faced a critical challenge: how could they allow customers to work with their diverse array of permit forms without Pulley's team having to manually configure every jurisdiction's forms? The traditional approach would require Pulley's staff to create templates for every permit form in every jurisdiction—an unsustainable task given the thousands of jurisdictions across North America.
Additionally, once permit applications are completed, they often require signatures from multiple parties—project owners, architects, engineers, contractors—before submission to authorities. Managing signature collection across multiple documents and parties adds another layer of complexity to an already cumbersome process.
Pulley needed a solution that would empower their customers to configure their own forms while providing AI assistance to speed up the templatization process, along with integrated signature collection to complete the workflow.
The Solution
Pulley implemented Anvil's embedded builders with AI capabilities, allowing their customers to templatize permit forms themselves and send them for signature through Etch E-sign API.
The embedded builders are integrated directly into Pulley's platform. When a customer needs to work with a permit form from a specific jurisdiction, they can upload the PDF form to Pulley's platform. Anvil's AI automatically analyzes the document, identifies fillable fields, and creates an initial template structure. This AI-powered detection dramatically speeds up the templatization process—what might take 30 minutes or more of manually drawing field boxes is reduced to a review and refinement step.
Customers can then refine the AI-generated template using the embedded builders, adjusting field mappings, adding conditional logic if needed, and ensuring the template matches their workflow requirements. Once configured, the template becomes part of their form library in Pulley's platform, ready to be used for future permit applications to that jurisdiction.
When it's time to submit a permit application, customers use Pulley's platform to fill out the templatized form with project-specific information. The completed documents are then sent for signature using Anvil's Etch E-sign API. The signing workflow can be configured to route documents to the necessary parties in sequence—perhaps the architect signs first, then the project owner, then the general contractor—ensuring all required signatures are collected before submission to the permitting authority.
This self-serve approach allows Pulley to support permit applications across any jurisdiction without their team needing to manually create templates for every form. Customers become self-sufficient in adding new jurisdictions as their projects expand to new locations.
By implementing Anvil's embedded builders with AI and Etch E-sign API, Pulley created a self-serve permitting solution that scales across thousands of jurisdictions without requiring manual template configuration for each one. The AI-powered approach speeds up templatization while empowering customers to add new forms as their projects expand.
