Three ways to add a form

OctaForms renders no markup on its own, so you choose how the form reaches the page. There are three levels, and they trade convenience for control. You can mix them across different forms on the same site.

At a glance

Approach	You write	You get	Best for
Starter shortcode	Nothing but `[octa_form slug="…"]`	An unstyled working form	Getting live fast, testing, prototypes
JS helper	Your own HTML markup	Submission, validation display and the token wired up for you	Most themes
Your own JavaScript	Markup and all the request logic	Full control over every request and response	Custom UX, SPAs, headless

How to choose

You just want a working form. Use the shortcode. Style it later or move up a level when you need to.
You want your own markup and styles, but not to hand-write fetch calls. Use the helper. You keep control of the HTML, and it handles the security token, the submit request, retries and showing validation errors.
You want to own every request. Talk to the REST API directly. You implement the token contract and the submission call yourself. This is the path for single-page apps, custom front ends, and anything headless.

Whichever you pick, the form’s slug is what ties your markup to its config. That never changes.