Concepts
Templates
A Template is a starting point for a new NPC: a name, a job title, a description, a system prompt, and a suggested set of Tools.
Creating an NPC offers you the gallery of Templates and a blank option, side by side. Neither is the default and neither is a footnote — if you know what you want, start blank; if you do not, start from something that already works.
Copied, never linked
Choosing a Template fills in the form. From that moment the NPC is yours and has no connection to what it came from.
Every field is editable before you save, and every field is editable afterwards. Changing a Template later does not touch a single NPC already created from it, and changing your NPC does not affect the Template or anybody else's NPC.
This is the whole of the relationship. There is no inheritance to reason about and no upgrade that arrives unannounced in your system prompt.
What ships in the box
Twelve Templates, each a small opinion about how that job should be done:
Their system prompts are worth reading even if you start blank. They are short, concrete, and mostly consist of telling the NPC what not to do — which is the part of a system prompt people tend to leave out.
Suggested Tools
A Template also suggests Tools. Pike, Ledger, Tally and Lens suggest a
Sandbox, because they work by running things.
Wren, Compass, Lark, Lens, Brief, Scout and Pitch suggest fetch_url. All
twelve suggest current_time.
The suggestion is applied as ordinary per-NPC grants once the NPC is saved, and you can change it then or later like any other grant. A suggested Sandbox on a Village that runs no Sandboxes simply does nothing.
Templates are content, not settings
Templates are seeded with the Village and are read-only over the API. There is no screen for authoring one, and there is no marketplace to browse — deliberately. An Operator who wants a different set edits the rows.
If you find yourself wanting a tenth Template, what you usually want is an NPC plus a Skill: the Skill is the part that keeps working after the NPC exists.
Next
- Starting from a template
- Your first NPC
- NPC — what each of those fields does once it is filled in.