NanoClaw Templates

Prebuilt agent templates for NanoClaw, an AI assistant that runs agents securely in their own containers.

A template is a folder you can stamp into a working NanoClaw agent. It carries the agent's standing instructions, its MCP tool servers, and its skills, but no secrets and no provider. Templates are provider-neutral; you pick the runtime separately, so one template works on any provider. Point ncl at one and you get a configured agent group in seconds.

New to NanoClaw? Start at the main repo or docs.nanoclaw.dev.

Using a template

There are two ways to stamp an agent from a template.

1. During install. Running the NanoClaw installer (bash nanoclaw.sh) opens a setup wizard with two template choices: NanoClaw template library clones this repo and copies the template you pick into your local templates/, and Local templates lists what is already in templates/. It then stamps and wires your first agent.

2. Anytime, via the CLI:

ncl groups create --template sales/sdr --name "SDR Agent"

--template <ref> is a path relative to your local templates directory (templates/ by default, or NANOCLAW_TEMPLATES_DIR, a local path only). Refs are multi-segment, e.g. sales/sdr resolves to templates/sales/sdr. For safety, absolute paths, a leading ~, and ../ escapes are rejected.

To use a template from this repo, get it into your local templates/ first. The install wizard's NanoClaw template library option clones this repo and copies the template you pick into templates/ for you; or copy the folder by hand. Then stamp it with its bare ref.

--name is optional; without it the agent group is named after the template folder.

Repository layout

Templates live under a category folder, one folder per template:

<category>/<template>/

For example:

sales/
└── sdr/        # Sales Development Representative agent

That sales/sdr path is exactly what you pass to --template.

Anatomy of a template

A template is just the files NanoClaw's template parser reads. Only context/instructions.md is required. Everything else is optional and defaults sensibly.

<template>/
├── context/
│   ├── instructions.md          # REQUIRED: the agent's persona (marks the folder as a template)
│   └── additional_context/      # optional: extra .md files, referenced from instructions.md by relative path
│       └── *.md
├── .mcp.json             # optional: MCP servers (command/args/env), NO secrets
├── skills/
│   └── <name>/           # optional: one folder per skill (SKILL.md + any references/)
└── README.md             # recommended: docs for this template

Path	Loaded as	Required
context/instructions.md	The agent's persona, prepended to its CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md every spawn (system-prompt tier, any provider)	Yes
context/additional_context/*.md	Extra context, referenced from instructions.md by relative path (additional_context/<file>)	No
.mcp.json → mcpServers	MCP tool servers	No
skills/<name>/	A skill (folder copied whole)	No

Notes for template authors:

• The presence of context/instructions.md is what marks a folder as a template, both for listing and for stamping.
• Keep instructions.md focused (under ~200 lines). It is always in the agent's prompt, and some providers cap that doc (Codex ~32 KB), so an over-long persona gets truncated. Put bulk material in skills/ or context/additional_context/.
• Put extra context under context/additional_context/ and reference it by plain relative path from instructions.md (e.g. `additional_context/pricing.md`), not @.... Extras are copied with the context/ prefix stripped, so context/additional_context/pricing.md becomes additional_context/pricing.md in the agent's workspace — the same path you reference. A plain path works under any provider.
• Each immediate subfolder of skills/ is one skill, named after the folder. The entire folder is copied, so place SKILL.md and any references/*.md inside it per the skills convention.
• Never commit secrets. .mcp.json carries command + args only. Credentials are injected at request time by the OneCLI gateway. See a template's own README (e.g. sales/sdr/README.md) for the per-service setup, including what to do if an MCP server needs a placeholder env var to boot.

Categories

Group every template under a category folder (<category>/<template>/).

Before adding a category, check whether an existing one fits and reuse it. If you genuinely need a new one, keep it a single, lowercase, broadly-recognized business function (e.g. sales, support, engineering, marketing, ops, finance), not a niche or product-specific label. The goal is a small, predictable set of categories a newcomer can guess.

Contributing

Templates are welcome via pull request. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the template structure, category conventions, the no-secrets rule, and how to test a template locally before you open a PR.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.