Start Templates

Start templates are optional briefing packs you can hand to a new project lead. Each template holds a briefing, a few kickoff questions, recipes for single sessions (when to run one, what to ask, which skills help, which model fits, what counts as done), and rules the lead follows. The lead plans one session per task from these recipes; there are no standing roles.

The dialog offers the templates in a Start templates menu with one switch per template. The menu label shows the chosen titles, or None when nothing is chosen. Loading problems appear as a small note in the dialog, never as an error. The field is only offered when you start a lead; when you change a lead, the remembered templates travel with it.

The six built-in templates

• SEO — search visibility from data to strategy, content and publishing.
• Website and Landing Page — structure, copy and build for pages that turn visitors into enquiries.
• App Coding — scoped coding packages with tests, repo checks and independent review.
• Marketing and Social — marketing plan, distribution drafts and LinkedIn posts in a personal voice.
• Sales and ads — paid search, Reddit and X campaigns and outreach that win leads.
• Research and Concept — concepts, data analysis, decision briefs, knowledge bases and research content.

Combining up to three

You can pick up to three templates; the menu disables the rest once three are chosen. The lead receives the full detail of one template, or a compact merge of several: shared recipes and rules appear once, and the full recipe details stay in project memory for the lead to search with lead_memory. Without any template the start works exactly as before — no first prompt.

Every combination fits the prompt budget; more than three, or a set that exceeds the budget, refuses the start with a clear message in the dialog instead of starting silently wrong.

The kickoff question block

Every start with templates begins with the same three questions:

1. What already exists (website, accounts, tools)?
2. What budget or timeframe applies?
3. What needs your approval before it happens?

Then come the kickoff questions of the chosen templates in selection order, deduplicated and capped at five questions in total. The lead asks them with board_ask before starting any session and records the answers with lead_memory as a preference. In the same round it agrees with you which skills each task kind uses (it looks them up with search_skills) and records them as skill bindings; see Required skills.

The “if available” rule

Skills named by a recipe are used when they exist. vord scans the installed skills (bundled, global and project-local) when the lead starts: skills that are there stay in the prompt, skills that are missing drop out — except when the skill set is unknown, in which case the recipe keeps them marked “if available”. Recipes that need a service which is not available are skipped when the service set is known; when it is unknown, everything stays in. vord does not know the project’s configured services from a single source, so services currently count as unknown and nothing is filtered.

Your own templates in ~/.vord/lead-templates/

A user template is one Markdown file with frontmatter and four sections:

---
id: my-topic
version: 1
title: My Topic
title_de: Mein Thema
summary: One line, English.
summary_de: Eine Zeile, Deutsch.
---
## Briefing
What the lead should achieve.
## Kickoff
- At most two questions.
## Recipes
### First session
- When: When it is needed.
- Brief: Goal, context, acceptance.
- Skills: skill-one, skill-two (or `none`)
- Needs: some-service (or omit)
- Model: standard model
- Acceptance: What counts as done.
## Rules
- One rule per line.

A file with your id replaces the built-in template with the same id; broken files are skipped and reported in the dialog. The templates are stored in project memory after the start: a preference noting the chosen titles, plus the full texts as one reference note tagged pl-start-template for later search (with vord Brain), or as .vord/project-lead/start-templates.md in the project folder without it.

On the iPhone

On the iPhone, the Start project lead sheet offers the same Start templates choice — up to three, titled in the phone’s language — when the connected Mac supports it; older Macs show no template section.