Editing Built-in Templates

Every Spruce project starts with five built-in artifact templates: feature, task, bug, chore, and memo. They're not hardcoded; they're markdown files in the project's templates/ folder, and you can edit them to match your team's workflow.

Opening the template editor

Go to Settings → Templates and click the template you want to edit. The editor shows the full schema: fields, options, display properties, and relationships.

Settings → Templates with the feature template open for editing

Common edits

Change status options

If your team uses different status values (say, New / Investigating / Fixed / Closed for bugs instead of the default flow), edit the template's status field and replace the options. Each option has a label, value, display color, and display icon.

Add a field

Click Add field in the schema editor. Pick a field type (see Field Types and Options), give it a label and description, and decide whether it should be pinned (visible as a chip on artifact cards). Save.

Change the color or icon

Under Display, edit the color (hex) or icon (Tabler icon name) of the template. This affects how artifacts of that type render across the app.

What happens to existing artifacts

Template changes are not destructive:

• Adding a field: existing artifacts don't have it; they'll show the field as empty.
• Removing a field: Spruce keeps the value in the artifact's frontmatter but doesn't render the field in the editor. Re-add the field to the template to bring it back.
• Changing option values: existing artifacts keep their prior value; editing them in the UI shows a warning and lets you migrate.

Versioning

Template files are part of the Spruce project, so template edits are committed and pushed through the sync flow. Your team sees the updated schema after a pull.

Related

• Field Types and Options — the available field types.
• Display properties — color, icon, pinned hints.
• Creating a Template — making an entirely new type.