A page can be saved as a template, and the daily note can start from one

[nyblnet]

Page templates for bento/spaces: save a page as a template, start a new page from one, and a template the daily note starts from — the workflow that makes this worth more than it looks, and the one thing a journal entry here could not do.

The format decision, and why

There was no page-template feature. doc.template in model.ts is the whole-file share export (a file that re-mints its docId on open) and is untouched; a comment now says so beside it, because the name collision is exactly the trap the next reader falls into.

Two honest places to put a template. A flagged page, hidden from the sidebar — no new format shape, and it is editable with the page editor for free. Or doc.templates, a collection nothing that walks pages can see. I took the second, and the reason is a count: doc.pages is enumerated in roughly forty places — search, the graph, backlinks and the tree (buildIndex), issuesOf and every board/table/gallery view in fields.ts, the Markdown export in portable.ts, the About counts, the agent API's pages/stats/outline/validate, the archive list, print, and the file-manager preview. A flagged page needs a gate at every one, and at every surface added afterwards by someone who has never heard of templates. This zone has shipped that class twice (isRemote applied before the asset indirection; the source-grep assertions in #392).

Measured in the built shell, not assumed — a word placed only in a template:

surface	result
bento.search('qqzzmarker')	0 hits
Export as Markdown (29,414 B)	word absent
bento.stats().pages	14 = doc.pages.length
sidebar tree	14 rows, no template row
Graph	"15 pages · 14 links" (15 = the non-archived pages)
bento.validate()	ok: true, 0 issues
backlinks on the link target	the two pages made from the template; not the template

What it costs, stated rather than hidden: a template is not a page, so it is not searched, graphed, back-linked, printed or exported — and it travels with the file, not with a page you graft into another space. A page-flag design would have grafted, and would have leaked into all thirteen surfaces above. Written up in docs/DECISIONS.md.

doc.journalTemplate names the template new daily notes start from. Absent ⇒ a blank entry, so every file written before this behaves as it always did; turning the setting off deletes the key rather than storing a default.

Tokens

Expanded once, at instantiation — the model stores the result. bento/slides resolves fields at render time because a footer must re-number when slides move; a template has no such need, and a live field would mean a page whose text changed under its author overnight. So the new page is an ordinary page an older build reads exactly as this one does.

{{date}} {{date:iso}} {{date:short}} {{date+1:iso}} {{date-14:iso}} {{time}} {{title}}. Anything else stays literal, so a {{mustache}} in somebody's prose survives.

A journal entry gets the date it is FOR. Backfilling in the browser: bento.journal('2026-01-05') produced Log for 2026-01-05 / Tomorrow is 2026-01-06, not today's date.

Untrusted input

Template ids come out of a file someone mailed you.

• templateById scans a list rather than indexing an object — journalTemplate: "constructor" resolves to nothing.
• The date-format lookup uses Object.hasOwn, so {{date:constructor}} is literal text rather than Object's constructor stringified into the reader's page.
• Instantiated html goes through sanitizeInline at the door, as portable.ts does for a graft — the document never holds the thing.

Verification

node scripts/test-spaces.mjs      all 8 rigs pass (model 991/991, agent, journal ×5 TZ,
                                  calc ×4 TZ, undo, invite, roundtrip, size)
tsc --noEmit -p spaces            clean
npm run build:single              607KB → 278KB
shell-gate.mjs                    old-updater splice contract OK
build-spaces-i18n.mjs --check     618 strings × 8 locales, all complete

41 new assertions in scripts/test-spaces-model.ts, all behavioural — every one imports the function and runs it; not a source grep among them. 991/991.

Sabotage-verified. Nine deliberate breaks, each watched to fail the exact assertions it should and then restored to green:

sabotage	assertions that failed
Object.hasOwn(DATE_FMT, key) → bare truthiness	the two {{date:constructor}} / {{date:toString}} checks
instantiation reuses template block ids	every block gets a FRESH id, with a fresh id
removeTemplate leaves a dangling journal setting	removing the journal template takes the setting with it
makeTemplate spreads the whole page	the parent, the date, the archive flag and the review threads do NOT
applyTemplate ignores keepTitle	the two journal-title checks
templateById indexes a plain record	all four prototype checks
token date offsets ignored	{{date+1:iso}}, {{date-14:iso}}
docContentKey drops templates	adding a template changes the content key
instantiation stops expanding tokens	the three expansion checks

Real browser, over http://127.0.0.1:8791 on a uniquely-named copy of each build, with a marker check proving the build (build 1: Templates… present in ⋯; build 2: the picker items carry <svg>; build 3: .sp-tpl-name computes display: flex). Geometry read with getBoundingClientRect, never by reading back a style. Verified: the ＋ picker opens below its anchor (top 95 > bottom 89) and inside the viewport at 260px; the dialog is 560×162; instantiation gives fresh ids, a remapped block parent, <b> and an #p/ link surviving the real sanitizer; the daily note arrives with its structure and keeps its ISO title; undo takes the whole thing back in one step; serialize() round-trips templates + journalTemplate through #bento-doc; no console errors.

Two defects the browser found that node could not, both fixed here: page icons in this app are usually a name from the stylised set, not an emoji, so the picker read "compass Daily log" (icons now render through a pageIcon supplied on the host, avoiding an import cycle); and .sp-result-ico is display: flex, so inside a plain span the template name wrapped under its own icon (measured at 17px row height after the fix).

Cost, and cross-zone touch

+7,368 B compressed (285,137 B with the feature vs 277,769 B for the same tree without it). The size rig's +26,683 B since reference is drift from the stored watermark, most of it other merged work.

scripts/test-spaces-model.ts and docs/DECISIONS.md are outside spaces/. The rig coverage rides with the feature per the contract; the shared-surface touch is claimed on the board by path (ops · spaces-templates). spaces/src/styles.css gains six appended lines and spaces/src/editor.ts gains four call sites plus a templateHost getter — everything else is the two new files, so this should merge cleanly against the sibling branches.

What I could not verify

• Collaboration. doc.templates is a top-level array and therefore one last-writer-wins register under the CRDT — two people saving a template at the same moment keeps one. Same shape as Page.rows and documented, not fixed.
• The graph was checked by its own header ("15 pages") rather than by counting nodes; it draws on canvas, so there is nothing in the DOM to count.
• No agent verb was added for templates, so docs/spaces-agents.md is unchanged. If templates should be reachable from window.bento, say so and I will add it as a follow-up rather than widening this.

[github-actions]

Build size

main (0100083) → spaces-templates (2fbd62d)

app	base	PR	change
bento/slides	677.9 KiB	677.9 KiB	0.0 KiB (0.00%)
bento/spaces	271.3 KiB	278.5 KiB	+7.2 KiB (+2.65%)
bento/dash	424.1 KiB	424.1 KiB	0.0 KiB (0.00%)

Updated: 2026-09-09T01:15:55Z