--- title: Project templates summary: How a project runs from a template of stages and tasks, how to write, try and put a template live, how to start a project from one, and how an agent's change to itself is approved. audience: users, agents owner: docs status: stable --- # Project templates A **project template** is the way a kind of work runs: stages, and in each stage the tasks that must be done, who does each, and how anyone knows it is done. A project started from a template follows it. A project started without one is just chats and files, like a Claude or ChatGPT project, and needs nothing from this page. ## What a template holds - **A name for its projects.** `noun: { one: "Matter", many: "Matters" }`. A firm calls its projects Matters, an agency Campaigns. The app says "New matter" in the New menu, and a project started from the template shows "Matter" where it would say "Project". Leave it out and they are projects. Only the owner or an admin makes a new template; a member starts projects from the live ones. - **Stages**, in order. A stage moves on when its required tasks are done and, if the stage before it says `moves_on_when`, that condition holds on the project. Its `owner` (`role:attorney` or `person:alex`) may move it on early, with a reason that is kept. - **Tasks** in a stage. Each has a doer (`role:researcher`, `teammate:research`, `person:alex` or `owner`), what it produces (`note`, `draft`, `decision`, `file`, `sent` or `fields`), an optional checker, and a checklist that proves it done. A task can also name what needs a yes, who to ask when stuck, and the Connections it may use. - **Roles**, each optionally filled by an agent on the roster. At most one role is the project lead. Every task gets a written **brief** from those choices: the goal and how it is known to be done, the context, what waits for a person's yes, who to ask, the checklist and the Connections. You write a brief by hand only when the generated one is not right. ## Write, try, put live 1. `work.template.define` stores a new **draft** version. Nothing runs from a draft. 2. `work.template.test` shows every stage, task, doer, brief and checklist on a sample project. Nothing is created, sent or changed. 3. `work.template.golive` puts a draft live. Only the template's owner or an admin can. The version that was live is retired. An agent, or @Engineer, proposes the same step with `flows.propose { what: "template", template, version }`: one card in Now for the owner, and their yes puts the version live. In the app, `/u/templates` is the studio: the tree, Test mode, Go live and an editor that saves a new draft. Kits can ship templates. `work.template.library` lists them and `work.template.install` adds one as a draft; the law-firm Kit ships Estate plan. ## Start a project In the app, open the template (Projects, Templates) and use **Start a project**: type the project's name, press **Start project**, and the new project opens with its team, its stages and the first stage's tasks in Now. The same thing for an assistant or a Flow is `work.start-project { template, name }`: it makes the project, adds the roles' agents as its teammates, pins the template's stages on the project, and makes the first stage's tasks. It is also a Flow step, "Start a project from a template", so a record reaching a stage can start one. A running project keeps the version it started with. Putting a newer version live, or retiring one, changes no project that is already running. `work.template.from-project` makes a draft template from a project that ran one. ## An agent's change to itself An agent's instructions, skills, model, effort and tags change by conversation. Tell the agent, or tell your assistant. The agent proposes the change (`flows.propose { what: "agent", agent, patch }`), the agent's owner approves on one card, and the change is a version. `agents.versions` lists them and `agents.update { agent, rollback: n }` restores one. Nobody but a person edits an agent directly, and permissions (projects, credentials, a computer) are never part of a proposal.