label-templates

name	label-templates
description	Save a label you print repeatedly as a reusable template, list what is saved, and print from one with fields overridden.

Label templates

A template is a label the user prints again and again with one field changing — a shelf tag, a cable label, a decanted-container label. Saving it means not re-deciding the media, the printer and the wording every time.

Templates are user content, so they live under the user-data root rather than the machine-local vault — they are worth mirroring to another machine, and they contain nothing network-specific. Ask the resolver for the path:

sh "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/paths.sh" --json

data_source in that output says which rule fired. adopted-existing means the user already keeps plugin content under that root and this plugin is filing alongside it rather than starting a second one — worth mentioning once, in plain terms, when you first report the path.

Save one

python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/labelctl.py" template save \
  --name "shelf-bin" \
  --text "BIN" --subtext "Workshop" \
  --media DK-22210 --printer ql-810w \
  --description "Workshop bin tag; number and QR set per use"

Store the parts that stay the same and leave the varying field as a stub. The description is what makes it findable later — write it for someone who has forgotten why the template exists.

Use one

python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/labelctl.py" template list
python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/labelctl.py" template show shelf-bin

python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/render.py" print \
  --template shelf-bin --text "BIN 14" --qr "https://inv.example/b/14"

Anything passed explicitly wins over the template; anything omitted falls back to it. So the printer and media come from the template and only the changing field is typed.

Manage them

python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/labelctl.py" template remove shelf-bin

To edit one, show it, then save over it with the same --name — the file is plain JSON named after the slug, so hand-editing is fine too.

Judgement

• Offer to save a template rather than creating one unasked. The signal is the user printing something structurally identical for the second or third time; a template made from a one-off is clutter.
• A template naming a printer is a portability trade. It saves typing on this machine and is wrong on another, where the id may not exist. For templates the user is likely to sync, leave --printer off and let the registry decide.
• Do not put a specific QR in a template unless every print really does point at the same page. A stale URL copied across twenty labels is the expensive mistake here.
• Removing a template is not destructive in any meaningful sense — but it is still the user's file. Say which file you are deleting before you do it.