Using a frame or a template means exploiting a computer's capabilities at pseudorandom number generation. Since rapid calculations were the first tasks assigned to computers, the calculations associated with selecting an apparently random item from a pre-composed list was among the first moves in computational poetics.
In 1974, Carole Spearin McCauley described this approach as one involving a "frame," but a more familiar conceptual may be the "Mad-Libs" language games that filled long trips in the times long ago before vehicular media centers and smartphones.
From Carole Spearin McCauley's Computers and Creativity (1974)