| name | project-spine-template |
| description | Use when the user wants to apply a bundled, user-local, or project-local template to a new project, or save the current project as a reusable template. Phrases like "use our agency starter", "save this as a template for future clients", "apply the shared saas-marketing starter". |
Template save / apply flow
Goal: reuse a team's agreed-upon project structure (brief scaffold + design rules + compile-time contributions) across client projects.
Template sources, priority order
Project Spine resolves templates from these roots (highest priority first):
- Project-local —
./.project-spine-templates/<name>/ committed to the current repo.
- User-local —
~/.project-spine/templates/<name>/ on this machine.
- Bundled —
saas-marketing, app-dashboard, design-system, docs-portal, api-service, and monorepo ship with the CLI.
Same name in a higher tier overrides lower tiers.
Flow A — apply an existing template to a new project
spine template list
Shows all templates reachable from this shell. The [source] column tells the user where each one comes from.
spine init --template <name>
Scaffolds brief.md from the template's starter content. Then follow project-spine-kickoff from Step 3.
Flow B — save the current project as a template
Prerequisite: the user already has a brief.md and ran spine compile at least once. The compiled .project-spine/spine.json is used to derive the template's contributes block automatically.
spine template save \
--name my-agency-saas \
--title "My agency SaaS starter" \
--description "Our marketing site template (Acme Inc.)" \
--location user
--location options:
user (default) — saves to ~/.project-spine/templates/<name>/; follows you across projects on this machine.project — saves to ./.project-spine-templates/<name>/; commits to the repo, shared via VCS.
When to recommend saving as project-local vs user-local
Save project-local if:
- The template represents a shared agency convention
- Multiple teammates will use it across client projects
- The brief scaffold / design rules include decisions the team has consensus on
Save user-local if:
- It's a personal preference (your favorite starter)
- You're experimenting with a template before committing the team to it
- The team hasn't set up a workspace yet
What NOT to do
- Don't save a template from an uncompiled project. The
contributes block derives from spine.json; without it the template is just a brief scaffold with empty rules.
- Don't name templates generically (
my-template, template1). spine template save requires lowercase-kebab names; pick something meaningful (my-agency-saas, client-admin-dashboard).
Follow-up conversations
If they ask for hosted workspace sync, switch to project-spine-workspace so the agent explains that workspace commands are dormant in the public OSS CLI.
If they want to share the template's output (rationale) with a client → switch to project-spine-rationale for local review.
