Two ways to start from something instead of from nothing. A template copies one page — with everything filed under it — into a new page. A blueprint sets up a whole new workspace: its databases, their columns and views, and its house rules. They are separate mechanisms with separate dialogs, and this page covers both.
The one sentence that governs templates is the one the dialog itself shows: A template is a snapshot: using one copies it, and from then on the two have nothing to do with each other.
What a template is
A template is an ordinary page carrying a flag. It has a body, an icon, a cover, sub-pages, and — if it is a collection — a schema, views and rows.
The flag adds a place rather than moving one. The page is listed in a Templates section of its own, and it also stays exactly where it was filed in the tree. A template saved from a page under Handbook is still drawn under Handbook. A template made from a collection is still drawn in Collections and counted there like any other collection.
One number disagrees with its own tree, and it is worth knowing before you go counting: the figure beside Documents leaves templates out, while the tree underneath it still draws them. So a workspace with one page and one template made from it shows 1 beside Documents and two rows below it.
Save as template does not flag the page you are looking at. It duplicates the page and flags the copy. That asymmetry is the whole design:
- the page you were working on stays an ordinary page and keeps its place;
- later edits to it never change what the template offers;
- pages made from the template never change the template either.
Nothing is linked, so nothing can be broken from a distance. The cost is that a template does not follow the page it came from — when the real page moves on, you save a new template, or open the template and edit it like any other page.
Saving a page as a template
- In the sidebar, hover the page and press ⋯ — or right-click the row. A right-click opens the same menu, on pages, on collections and on database rows, so you never have to hunt for a button that only appears on hover.
- Choose Save as template.
A short message says Saved as template, or Could not save as template if it failed. You need write access to the page; a viewer cannot save one. See Permissions.
What travels into the snapshot:
| Travels | Stays behind |
|---|---|
| the page body, icon and cover | its tags |
| every sub-page, however deep | its description |
| database rows, with their property values | favourites |
| the collection’s schema and views | later edits to the original |
Tags and descriptions are not copied. That matters more than it sounds, because the gallery’s category buttons are built from a template’s tags and the second line under each entry is its description — a freshly saved template has neither until you open it and add them.
Giving a template its tags and description
Both live on the template page itself, not in the gallery:
- Open the template — click its row in the Templates section.
- For the description, open the ⋯ menu at the top right of the page and choose Add a description. A text field appears under the title, with the placeholder Add a description…. The same menu offers Remove description once there is one.
- For tags, use the field under the title. It reads + Add a tag while the page has none and + Tag afterwards.
Each tag you use becomes a category button in the gallery, so it is worth using the same few words across a workspace rather than a new one each time.
Where the template lands
The template lands next to the page it was made from, as its sibling, and it stays visible there. If you saved a template from a page filed under Handbook, the template sits under Handbook in the tree and is listed in the Templates section at the same time. Pages you later make from it appear under Handbook as well.
Only the parts of the subtree you are allowed to read are copied. A private sub-page belonging to someone else is left out, and so is everything under it.
Saving a database row as a template
A database row carries the same ⋯ menu as a page, so Save as template is offered on one — and what you get is rarely what you wanted:
- The copy lands as a sibling of the row, which makes it another child of the collection. The collection lists every child that is not in the trash, so the template shows up in the table as an ordinary extra row.
- It does not reach the Templates section or the gallery at all. A row with no sub-pages of its own is left out of the page list the sidebar is built from, and the flag does not change that.
- An agent can still see it:
listwithkind: "templates"reads the flag directly and finds it.
If you want a reusable row, keep the shape in an ordinary page and template that instead.
The Templates section
The section appears in the sidebar once the current workspace has at least one template, and starts collapsed the first time; after that it remembers whether you left it open. The number beside it is how many there are. Templates belong to a workspace: switch workspaces and you see that workspace’s templates.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| ＋ on the section (New page from a template) | opens the template gallery |
| ＋ on a row (New page from this template) | copies that template straight away and opens the copy |
| ⋯ → Remove template flag | turns it back into an ordinary page: it leaves this list and stays where it already was in the tree |
| ⋯ → Move to trash | throws the snapshot away — recoverable, see Trash and recovery |
| clicking the row | opens the template so you can edit it |
Those two entries are the whole menu here — a template row does not offer the page menu the tree rows have, and does not answer a right-click. To move a template, duplicate it or export it, use its row in the tree instead.
If a copy cannot be made you get The template could not be used; a failed flag change says Could not be changed.
In a workspace set to the mixed tree there is one section called Pages instead of Documents, and no Collections section at all. Templates behave the same way in both: listed in the Templates section, and still drawn in the one tree where they were filed.
The template gallery
The gallery is the screen for choosing a template you have not memorised: a list on the left, the template’s own content on the right, and one button that says what happens. Open it with the ＋ on the Templates section. Clicking outside the dialog closes it.
Search templates… filters by title and description. Below it sit category
buttons — All plus one per tag used on any template in this workspace, in
alphabetical order. Each entry shows its icon, its title, its description and its
tags as #chips. The list is sorted by title, and one template is already
selected when the dialog opens, so Use template works from the first moment.
The right-hand pane is the template’s Markdown export: exactly the text you get from Export Markdown and from an agent reading the page, rendered as plain text rather than as formatted blocks. A collection appears as a table of its rows with one column per property — which is precisely what you want to judge before copying one. While it loads you see Loading…; if it cannot be produced, No preview available. A collection also carries a small table icon beside the title in the preview heading; its tooltip reads Collection.
The preview shows the template page itself. Sub-pages are copied when you use it but are not part of the preview.
The buttons along the bottom, left to right:
| Control | Notes |
|---|---|
| the count (3 templates) | every template in the workspace — it ignores the search box and the chosen category, so filtering the list down to one still reads 3 templates |
| Remove template flag | only while a template is selected |
| Delete | only while a template is selected |
| Close | |
| Use template |
Delete trashes the template immediately, with no confirmation step. It is a normal trashing, so the page can be restored. After Delete or Remove template flag the dialog stays open and the selection moves to the first template still in the list.
When the search or the chosen category matches nothing, the list says No templates yet. and the right-hand side shows Save any page as a template from its ⋯ menu — the page itself stays untouched. That is also the empty state for a workspace with no templates at all — which you will not reach in practice, because the gallery’s only entrance is the ＋ on the Templates section, and that section is only there once a template exists.
Using a template
- Open the gallery, or use the ＋ on a template row.
- Pick the template. Check the preview.
- Press Use template.
You get a new page and are taken to it. It keeps the template’s title — no “Copy of” prefix, because a snapshot is meant to be named what it is. It is not itself a template, and it belongs to you: you are the owner of the copy even when the template was set up by somebody else.
The copy lands as a sibling of the template, so it appears in the tree where the template’s own parent is — at the top level, if the template is at the top level.
To move it afterwards, drag it in the sidebar: drop it on the middle of another row to file it inside that page, and on the top or bottom edge of a row to place it before or after. The ⋯ menu has no general move; it offers Move to top level, and only when the page has a parent to leave, and a Move to workspace list, and only when you belong to more than one workspace. That last one works on templates too — a template can be moved to another workspace like any page, and it becomes that workspace’s template.
Templates that are collections
Saving a database as a template snapshots its rows along with its schema and its views. That is usually what you want for a small starter set — five example rows, a board already grouped, a filter already set — and rarely what you want for a full table.
One limit worth knowing: a relation column in a copied database still points at the original target database, and copied rows still point at the original rows. Duplication does not rewrite references. If you want two related databases set up cleanly against each other, that is what a blueprint does — see below. Relations and rollups themselves are explained in Relations and rollups.
Templates for agents
Over MCP a template is reached with three of the tools listed in MCP tools:
| Call | What it does |
|---|---|
list with kind: "templates" | every template you may read: id, title, icon, kind (doc or collection), description and workspace |
create_page with template_id | makes a page from that template; only title applies alongside it, and it renames the copy |
save_as_template with page_id | snapshots the page — the answer says the page itself is unchanged |
duplicate_page is the plain copy, with no template flag involved.
Two differences from the browser are worth knowing. list with
kind: "templates" returns templates from every workspace the connection
can reach and ignores workspace_id; each entry names its own workspace instead.
And an agent needs only read access to a template to build a page from it,
while Use template in the browser goes through
/api/pages/{id}/duplicate and asks for write access — so a template in a
workspace where you are a viewer can be used by an agent connected as you but
not by you in the interface.
Blueprints: a whole workspace at once
A template copies a page. A blueprint sets up a workspace — which is a different question, because everything that makes a workspace usable is invisible: the rules, the option ids behind a select, the backrelations, the rollups, the view filters. Rebuilt by hand it comes out almost-but-not-quite the same.
Opening the shelf
Open the workspace switcher at the top of the sidebar and choose New workspace.
The entry is only there if you may create one. Instance admins always may. Everybody else may while the instance allows it — and when it is switched off the entry is simply absent, with no explanation anywhere in the browser. An agent or a direct API call gets the sentence instead: creating workspaces is disabled on this instance — ask an admin. See Administration.
The dialog is headed Start with a ready-made workspace, with the line Each one brings its databases, views and house rules — and no data. You fill it.
The shelf holds:
- Empty workspace — Start from nothing and build it yourself.
- the three built-in blueprints below;
- under Or like one you already have, each of your non-personal workspaces, offering Its databases and rules, without the content. Personal workspaces are not offered.
Cancel at the bottom closes the dialog, and so does a click outside it.
Each ready-made card carries a facts line — so many databases, so many columns, so many views, plus house rules when it has any. Those numbers are read out of the blueprint itself rather than typed beside it, so the shelf cannot advertise something the blueprint does not contain.
What the built-in blueprints contain
They ship inside the salt.md binary, so a fresh install has them with no network and no account. None of them contains a single row. The view names below are the chips you see on the card’s detail view; what each one is grouped or dated by is in brackets.
Software team 🛠️ — What we run, and what still has to be done to it.
| Collection | Columns | Views |
|---|---|---|
| Systems 🧩 | Status, Kind, If it goes down, Owner, Version, Runs on, Repository, Next check, Tasks (backrelation), Open, Progress | Table, Board (grouped by Status), Checks (calendar on Next check) |
| Tasks ✅ | Status, System (relation), Kind, Priority, Effort, Owner, Milestone, Due | Board (grouped by Status), Table, By system (board grouped by System), Dates (calendar on Due) |
Open counts the tasks whose status is not Done; Progress is the percentage that are. Both are rollups over the backrelation, which is what makes “how much of this system’s work is finished” a column rather than a count you do by eye.
Sales pipeline 🤝 — Companies on one side, deals on the other, and a board you can drag.
| Collection | Columns | Views |
|---|---|---|
| Companies 🏢 | Status, Industry, Size, Owner, Website, Next touch, Deals (backrelation), Open deals, Pipeline | Table, Board (grouped by Status), Next touches (calendar on Next touch) |
| Deals 💶 | Stage, Company (relation), Value, Expected close, Owner, Came from | Board (grouped by Stage), Table, Closing (calendar on Expected close) |
Open deals counts the deals whose stage is not Won. Pipeline carries no condition at all: it sums the Value of every deal on the company, won and lost included. If you want only the open money there, add a condition to the rollup — see Relations and rollups.
Content calendar 🗓️ — Every channel, every piece, and the date it goes out.
| Collection | Columns | Views |
|---|---|---|
| Channels 📡 | Kind, Cadence, Owner, Link, Pieces (backrelation), Not out yet, Published | Table, Board (grouped by Kind) |
| Pieces ✍️ | Status, Channel (relation), Goes out, Owner, Topic, Published at | Calendar (on Goes out), Board (grouped by Status), Table |
Not out yet counts the pieces whose status is not Published; Published is the percentage that are.
Every one of them carries house rules — a written page about how the workspace is meant to be used, which agents connected to the workspace are told to follow. See Workspaces.
Creating one
- Click a card. The detail view opens with the blueprint’s tagline as its lead line, then each database: its icon, its name, its view chips, its own one-line description, and its columns with the real colours of their select options. Under those, House rules shows the opening paragraph of the rules document as plain text — the heading is skipped, and bold, italic, code and link markup are stripped rather than rendered. Choosing your own workspace instead shows Copies the databases with their columns, options and views, plus the workspace rules. Rows and documents stay where they are.; the empty card shows No databases, no rules — a blank workspace.
- Fill in Name (placeholder e.g. Team). A ready-made blueprint pre-fills its own title — change it to what the workspace is actually for. Two ways back to the shelf: the Back button beside the create button, and the arrow at the left of the heading.
- Press Create workspace, or press Enter in the name field. You are switched into the new workspace, as its admin.
Creating from one of the three ready-made blueprints is written to the
audit log — that path is its own route,
/api/library/{id}. An Empty workspace and a copy of one of your own are
not: both go through /api/workspaces, which records nothing.
If a workspace of that name already exists on the instance, the new one is created as Name (Import) — including when the existing one belongs to somebody else and you cannot see it. That rename applies to the ready-made blueprints and to imported archives, not to copying a workspace of your own.
Nothing on the shelf costs anything today. The mechanism for paid entries exists and refuses rather than handing one out (this blueprint has to be bought first), so a card that will not create is what that looks like.
Copying a workspace you already have
Or like one you already have points at a workspace instead of a file. There is no saved workspace-template object on purpose: the workspace that already works is the blueprint, so it cannot drift out of step with how you actually work.
What comes across: the workspace rules, every database that is not in the trash, their full property schemas including option ids, and their views. What does not: rows, documents, files, members and tag colours. The copied databases land at the top level of the new workspace, in the order they had.
Two repairs happen on the way, and both are visible in the result:
- Relations are re-pointed at the copied databases. A relation whose target was not part of the copy loses its target instead of keeping it — the column shows as unconfigured. Left alone it would quietly read rows out of the old workspace, which looks like it works until somebody notices the numbers belong to another project.
- View filters on a relation column are dropped. No rows are copied, so such a filter could only match nothing; without it the view simply shows everything.
A workspace with no databases cannot be used this way: workspace ”…” has no databases to copy — nothing to use as a blueprint.
If you want the content too, that is an export and import rather than a blueprint — see Import and export.
Blueprints for agents
An agent creates a workspace from an existing one with the workspace tool and
from_workspace: the same structure copy, the same repairs, no rows and no
documents. The built-in shelf has no MCP tool; it is a browser dialog that reads
/api/library and creates through /api/library/{id}. A connection limited to
particular workspaces cannot create new ones at all — it would not be able to
open them. See Agents.
Which one do I want?
| Template | Blueprint | |
|---|---|---|
| Copies | one page and everything under it | a whole workspace’s structure |
| Includes content | yes — sub-pages, and a collection’s rows | no |
| Includes workspace rules | no | yes |
| Where it comes from | a page you saved | the built-in shelf, or a workspace of yours |
| Lands | beside the template | in a brand-new workspace |
| Started from | the Templates section | the workspace switcher → New workspace |
Limits worth knowing
- No Templates section until there is a template. The gallery has no other entry point, so the first one is always saved from a page’s ⋯ menu.
- A template does not update itself. It is a snapshot of the moment you saved it. Keeping one current means editing the template or saving a new one and removing the old flag.
- Tags and descriptions do not survive the copy, so the gallery’s categories stay empty until you tag the template page itself.
- Templates are still pages. They are found by search, counted on the shelves in the library, and they sit in the tree where they were filed. The one place the flag takes them out of is the graph — a template is not drawn there and neither are its connections.
- A row’s template is a trap. Saved from a database row, it becomes another row of that collection and never appears in the Templates section.
- Duplication does not rewrite references. A copied database keeps its relation columns pointed at the original target.
- Creating workspaces can be switched off instance-wide, which removes the New workspace entry and with it the blueprint shelf — for everybody except instance admins, and with no message to say why.
Related: Pages for the ⋯ menu the template is saved from, Collections and Views for what a database template carries, Properties for the column types the blueprints use.