Starting from a Template
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Starting from a Template
Duplicate a proven project foundation into your account in one click, then customise the specifics. · Optional
Templates are an optional faster on-ramp. If your product fits a common shape — a SaaS app, a marketplace, an e-commerce store — a template gives you a full, pre-generated spec to start from instead of a blank prompt. If your idea is novel or you want full control from the first word, skip this and start from a prompt in Creating your first project.
What a template is
Each template is the common core of a category of app — the personas, features, pages, and schema you'd end up building every time for that kind of product. Using one deep-copies that entire foundation into a brand-new project you own, so you spend your time on what makes your product different rather than regenerating boilerplate.
The clone is a normal project in every way: fully editable, versioned, and detached from the original — changes you make never touch the template or any other user's copy.
Step 1: Open the template gallery
Go to the Templates gallery. Each card shows the template's category, an optional Featured badge, a title, and a short description of what the foundation covers.
Step 2: Preview a template (optional)
If a card has a Preview button, click it to see what the template contains before committing. This helps you confirm the personas, features, and pages match what you're building.
Step 3: Use the template
Click Use this template on the card you want.
- If you're signed in, VibeMap clones the template's foundation into a new project and drops you straight into it. The button shows "Adding to your projects…" while it works.
- If you're signed out, you're sent to log in first, then returned to the gallery to finish — your choice is remembered.
Step 4: Make it yours
You land inside a fully populated project. From here, treat it like any other spec:
- Edit the project summary so the positioning matches your product, not the generic category.
- Adjust personas and features — remove what doesn't apply, and generate what's missing.
- Regenerate downstream artifacts (user stories, acceptance criteria, pages, schema) once you've reshaped the features, so everything stays consistent.
- Continue along the normal journey — Prepare for Dev, then hand off to your coding agent.
⚠️ Watch out: A template reflects the category, not your product. Always revise the summary and features first — otherwise every downstream generation inherits the generic assumptions baked into the template.
Template vs. blank start
| Start from a template | Start from a prompt | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Common app shapes (SaaS, marketplace, e-commerce) | Novel ideas, or full control from the start |
| Setup | One click — a whole spec appears | Write a description; wait for generation |
| First task | Customise a ready-made foundation | Review the generated summary |
| Uniqueness | You edit away from a shared baseline | Built around your idea from the first word |
| Speed to a full spec | Fastest | Fast, but you generate each layer |
Both paths converge on the same editor and the same journey — the only difference is where you begin.
⚡ Power-user hints
- Use a template as a checklist, even if you start from a prompt. Browse a similar template to see which features and pages a mature product in that category usually needs, then make sure your own spec covers them.
- Clone, then delete aggressively. It's faster to remove features that don't apply than to generate a complete set from scratch — start broad, then trim.
↔ The traditional way
A team facing a familiar build usually copies an old project's PRD, strips out the client-specific bits, and reworks it — error-prone, and it drags stale assumptions along. A VibeMap template gives you a clean, self-contained clone with no leftover references, and because every artifact is cross-linked, reshaping the features updates the stories, criteria, and schema with you.
What's next
- Writing effective prompts — for the parts of the spec you'll regenerate.
- The Progression Map — where your cloned project sits in the journey.