Templates and the manifest
How a template declares its services, modes, database, and seeds — and the six that ship today.
A template is a directory that knows how to be cloned. It contains the app's
code (backend, optional frontend, MCP server) plus a clone.manifest.json that
tells the CLI everything it needs to spin, migrate, health-check, and seed it.
Templates live under the templates directory (the monorepo apps/ by default;
override with ASYM_TEMPLATES_DIR). The published CLI bundles each manifest with
its compose file, so it resolves templates from its own bundle with no monorepo
present. The CLI discovers a template by reading each manifest's name — so
apps/slack-clone/ declares the name slack, which is what you type in
hone env spin slack.
The manifest
Here's the Slack template's clone.manifest.json, annotated:
{
"name": "slack", // canonical id used on the CLI
"displayName": "Slack",
"realProduct": "slack", // what `verify` scores fidelity against
"services": {
"backend": {
"image": "ghcr.io/asymmetric-ai/asymmetric-slack-backend:latest", // pulled, not built
"port": 3001, // container port
"health": "/api/health" // polled until healthy on spin
},
"frontend": {
"build": "./frontend", // the one service still built from source
"port": 5173,
"optional": true
}
},
"modes": { // named service sets
"api": ["backend"],
"full": ["backend", "frontend"]
},
"database": {
"migrations": "./supabase/migrations", // .sql files, run in sorted order
"nameTemplate": "clone_{id}" // per-clone database name
},
"redis": {
"prefixTemplate": "{id}:" // per-clone key prefix
},
"seed": {
"fixtures": "./seeds/*.sql", // deterministic fixture packs
"ai": {
"entities": ["users", "channels", "messages"]
}
}
}Backends declare an image (pulled and digest-pinned at spin). A service can
instead declare build for a local build context — today only Slack's optional
frontend does.
Fields that matter
| Field | Drives |
|---|---|
name | The identifier you type (spin <name>, verify <name>). |
services[].image | The published image the CLI pulls and runs (digest-pinned). |
services[].health | The endpoint spin and reset poll before declaring the clone healthy. |
modes | What --mode accepts; the first key is the default. |
database.migrations | The .sql files run on create and replayed on reset. |
database.nameTemplate | How the per-clone database is named ({id} is substituted). |
redis.prefixTemplate | The per-clone Redis key namespace. |
seed.fixtures | The glob of named fixture packs seed --fixture can load. |
seed.ai.entities | What AI seeding generates for this template. |
Ready-made templates
Six templates ship today. Each backend is a published image; verify scores it
against the real product's live API documentation.
RPC Web API, MCP server, and a frontend. The {ok} envelope, Slack-format
ids, byte-identical events. Modes: api, full.
REST API: customers, payments, invoices, subscriptions, refunds, and signed webhooks. API-only.
REST API: databases, data sources, pages, blocks, views, comments, file uploads, search — with Notion's rate limits. API-only.
CRM REST API: generic objects, v4 associations, properties, pipelines, owners, OAuth tokens, and HubSpot-accurate rate limiting. API-only.
REST API: repos, issues, pull requests, comments, labels, tokens, and rate limiting. API-only.
GraphQL API: issues, projects, teams, cycles, and webhooks. API-only.
Default container ports are slack 3001, linear 3002, stripe 3003,
notion 3004, hubspot 3005, github 3006; the host port for each clone is
allocated at spin time from your range (default 3000–3999).
Templates are built and maintained by Tensile — you spin and use them, you don't author your own.