Templates and packs

Templates persist; captures drain

A capture is meant to be acted on and marked done. A template is different -- it's a reusable prompt you'll want to run again, in this project or several. Instantiating a template copies its body into a new capture (promoted straight into Now) and leaves the template itself untouched in the library, so "run this on nexa-erp" doesn't consume the template you'll also want to run on your next project.

Placeholders

A template body can declare {{name}} placeholders. Instantiating with values fills them in; leaving a placeholder unfilled keeps it literal in the resulting capture rather than silently blanking it out -- an honest signal that something wasn't filled in, not a smaller version of what the prompt actually said. The app shows a small form for any template with placeholders before running it.

Packs: shared, git-hosted collections

A pack is a git repository with a magpie.json manifest at its root, describing a named collection of prompts. No server, no accounts, no hosting, no moderation to run -- a pack is just a repo someone can git clone.

{
  "name": "Dev Workflow Pack",
  "description": "A small set of prompts for everyday development",
  "prompts": [
    {
      "title": "Fix a failing test",
      "description": "Diagnose and fix a specific failing test",
      "body": "Investigate why {{test_name}} is failing in {{package}} and fix it.",
      "variables": {
        "test_name": { "description": "The name of the failing test" },
        "package": { "description": "Which package or crate it's in" }
      }
    },
    {
      "title": "Update changelog",
      "body": "Update CHANGELOG.md with today's changes."
    }
  ]
}

Import (or re-import) a pack with the CLI:

magpie pack add github:someone/agent-prompts
magpie pack add https://example.com/some-pack.git
magpie pack add ./a-local-pack     # for testing a pack before publishing it

Named pack add rather than plain add, since that name is already taken by plain-text capture -- magpie add github:... and magpie add "some text I copied" would otherwise be indistinguishable.

Re-running pack add against the same source updates that pack's templates in place rather than duplicating them, matched by title within the pack. Pulling a pack's latest changes is just importing it again.

magpie pack list                # every imported pack
magpie pack templates <pack_id> # one pack's templates