💡 Configuration template gallery for common automation patterns

[github-actions[bot]]

Summary

Add a template selector to the deploy page's Step 4 that offers pre-made configuration patterns for common use cases (e.g., "Archive vendor emails", "Track team calendar", "Weekly meeting prep briefing"). Templates pre-fill the config form with recommended settings and descriptive names, reducing decision paralysis for first-time users while teaching them the configuration model by example. A "Blank (custom)" option remains the default for advanced users.

Market Signal

Zapier's Zap templates are among their most-used onboarding features — they reduce setup time by 60% and increase completion rates. Make offers a template marketplace with 1,000+ community-contributed scenarios. IFTTT's "Applets" are essentially curated templates. Every successful automation platform has discovered that templates bridge the gap between "I want this" and "I configured this." The pattern is so proven that Google's own Workspace Studio Skills (rolling out August 2026) are essentially reusable instruction templates for Gemini — the same concept applied to AI workflows.

User Signal

The deploy page's Step 4 config UI presents empty forms with dropdowns. Non-technical users (the PRD's Morgan persona) face "blank canvas" paralysis: which label should I pick? What folder structure makes sense? How should I name things? Templates provide opinionated starting points that encode best practices. The project now has 6 scripts in the repo but only 3 in the deploy catalog — as the catalog grows, templates become even more critical for guiding users toward effective configurations. No existing discussions address pre-made configuration templates.

Technical Opportunity

The SCRIPT_CATALOG already defines config schemas per script (see deploy/index.html:443). Templates are JSON objects conforming to those schemas, bundled as a static array in deploy/index.html or fetched from a templates/ directory. The Step 4 UI already renders config forms dynamically — pre-filling from a template requires minimal code (populate form fields from template object instead of empty defaults). The architecture is already template-ready; this is a content + UX addition, not a structural change.

Assessment

Dimension	Score	Rationale
Feasibility	high	Templates are static JSON conforming to existing schemas; the config form already supports programmatic field population
Impact	med	Reduces first-time config friction significantly; teaches the config model by example; proven pattern from competitors
Urgency	med	Not blocking any user flow today, but increasingly important as the script catalog grows beyond 3 entries

Adversarial Review

Strongest objection: The project only has 3 scripts in the deploy catalog with 2-3 config fields each. How many meaningful templates can you create? And templates go stale when config schemas change.

Rebuttal: Even 2-3 templates per script dramatically reduce first-time setup friction — "Personal email archive" vs. "Work email archive" vs. "Newsletter collection" for gmail-to-drive alone changes the experience from blank form to guided choice. Templates are simple JSON validated against the schema automatically. Staleness is a non-issue at current scale — 3 scripts × 3 templates = 9 files to maintain. The pattern scales naturally as the catalog grows, and schema validation catches breaking changes at CI time.

Suggested Next Step

Create a templates/ directory with 2-3 JSON template files per deployed script. Add a "Start from template" dropdown to the Step 4 UI that populates config form fields when selected. Include a "Blank (custom)" option as default. Ship with gmail-to-drive-by-labels templates first ("Personal email archive", "Work correspondence archive", "Newsletter collection") as proof of concept.