Guides

Starting from a Template

A Template is a starting point for a new NPC — a Job Title, a description, a system prompt, and a suggested set of Tools. It is copied when you use it and never linked afterwards.

Pick one

Press New NPC. A new NPC is made in five steps: Start, Identity, Instructions, Model and Review. The first step is the gallery: every Template this Village ships, plus a Start blank card alongside them rather than tucked away as a footnote. A Player who knows exactly what they want should not have to dismiss a gallery to get there.

Each card shows the Job Title, what that NPC is for, and the Tools it suggests. Choosing one fills in the Identity and Instructions steps and moves you on to Identity.

What ships in the box

Name	Job Title	For	Suggested Tools
Wren	Researcher	Reading around a question and coming back with sources	`fetch_url`, `current_time`
Pike	Engineer	Writing and running code on its own machine	`sandbox`, `current_time`
Quill	Editor	Turning rough notes into something people will read	`current_time`
Ledger	Analyst	Working through data and reporting what it found	`sandbox`, `current_time`
Compass	Generalist	Whatever does not fit a specialist	`fetch_url`, `current_time`
Tally	Accountant	Bookkeeping, budgets and figures that must reconcile	`sandbox`, `current_time`
Lark	Writer	Drafting articles, posts and docs from a brief	`fetch_url`, `current_time`
Lens	Reviewer	Reviewing code, documents and plans, worst issue first	`fetch_url`, `sandbox`, `current_time`
Brief	Legal	Explaining contracts and policies in plain language	`fetch_url`, `current_time`

GET /api/npc-templates returns them, ordered by their sort order and then by name. That is the only route: Templates are read-only over the API.

Everything stays editable

The steps after the gallery are the ones you would have filled in yourself. Change the name, rewrite the system prompt, drop the Job Title, set a Provider and Model — nothing is locked, and nothing has to be kept. Next will not leave Identity until the NPC has a name.

Two fields the Template does not set:

Provider and Model start on inherit the Village default. See Choosing models.
Thinking starts at Off, as it does for every new NPC.

Suggested Tools are granted once

The Template's suggested Tools arrive ticked on the Instructions step, and the Review step lists the ones still ticked. Press Create NPC and they are granted to the new NPC, as if you had ticked them yourself on its Tools pane. From that point they are ordinary grants: add to them, remove them, ignore them.

One of them needs a second step. A Template suggesting sandbox grants the NPC permission to use a machine; it does not create one. Go to the NPC's Sandbox pane and press Give this NPC a machine — see Using the Sandbox.

Copied, never linked

There is no column on an NPC pointing back at the Template it came from, and nothing reads one later. The Template's fields are copied into the form, the form creates the NPC, and the two have nothing to do with each other afterwards.

That means:

Editing a Template does not reach into NPCs already created from it.
Deleting a Template does not affect them either.
Two NPCs created from one Template can diverge completely.

The alternative — a live link — would mean an Operator improving a Template silently rewriting the system prompt of an NPC somebody had already tuned.

Changing what the gallery offers

Templates are rows in npc_template, seeded by a migration because they are content rather than data. There is no route that creates or edits one, and no form: an Operator who wants a different set edits those rows, or the migration that seeds them, and neither needs an endpoint.

Each row carries a unique slug, the name, jobTitle, description and systemPrompt that prefill the form, a suggestedTools list, and a sortOrder that decides where it appears in the gallery.

There is no Template marketplace and no sharing between Villages. Templates ship in the box and are edited in the repository.

Start blank instead

Press Start blank and you get the same steps with nothing filled in. A Template saves you writing a system prompt from scratch; it is not a step you have to pass through.