What it owns, and what it does not
A Visualization is bound to one precise question. A template is reusable
across questions — which is why it is its own object rather than a column on
that one.
Where you find it
Templates are a lens of Reports, and each template opens its own workbench. They are browsable, not merely addressable: a starting point nobody can browse is not a starting point. A list of templates is a list of possible answers, never a catalogue of chart types. Each row states the question the template answers, its visual family, what it requires in the words of the roles — “one measure, one low-cardinality dimension, one time axis” — its provenance, and how many versions it has. The most useful filter is compatibility with an open Result: from a Result, the list narrows to the templates that Result satisfies, and the ones it does not say which predicate is missing rather than disappearing. Three empty states, never one: no project template yet; no seed available; no template compatible with the open Result. Each names the gesture that fills it.The compatibility verdict
The verdict is computed at the moment somebody asks. Nothing stores one — what it reads moves without either object moving, so a stored verdict would be a value nobody computed at the moment it was read.
Incompatible and Unavailable are not the same sentence. One says this Result
cannot answer this way; the other says nobody knows yet — and a person acts on
them differently. A measured failure outranks an unmeasured predicate, because a
named failure is an answer.
Which roles a Result offers is read from the schema it declares, resolved against
the members its pinned question selected. A field the question does not name
carries no role, and none is inferred from its name. Every sentence names a
member by its canonical name, never by its identifier.
Applying one
Applying a template to a Result produces an ordinary Visualization Spec version of the project, through the same validator and the same writer every hand-built presentation goes through — and through no other path. Nothing in the produced document says it came from a template. The same presentation composed by hand in the builder is indistinguishable from it: same hash, same table, same refusals. The template is recorded beside the document as provenance, never inside it — a hash that depended on how a presentation was born would make two identical charts two different objects. The one choice materialisation makes is which member occupies which well. It takes exactly the number of members the predicate asked for, in the order the Result states them. Everything the template says about the presentation crosses over unchanged, with each anchor that named a well now naming the member that landed in it.- The verdict is asked first and is binding. An incompatible template is refused before a document is composed, with the unsatisfied predicates named. Nothing is written on that path.
- No question is re-executed and no Result is created. The Visualization Spec pins the Query Spec version the Result already carries.
- A seed is read, never rewritten. Editing a visualization derived from a template writes a new project-owned version whose predecessor is the materialised one; the template version is left exactly as it was.
Seeded by a connector, owned by the project
A template records where it came from:project, platform_seed, or
connector_seed. A connector may ship Chart Templates as data; drawing one into
a project creates a project head marked with that origin, and the first edit
makes the head project-owned in the same statement. A connector never owns a
Chart Template in your project.
No connector ships one today. That is what makes “no seed available” a
measurement rather than a placeholder — the empty state is reporting a fact, not
covering for a missing feature.
Next Steps & Cross-References
Renders, Dossiers and Sharing
What happens to a presentation once it is frozen.
Agent Tools
render_analyze_result takes a template version as well as a spec version.Semantic Layer
The governed measures and dimensions a predicate is written against.
Use Cases
Where a template fits in an agent’s path from question to document.