Agent Templates

Agent templates let you configure specialized agent behaviors with custom system prompts, model selection, and parameter overrides.

Built-in templates

ZeptoClaw ships with 4 built-in templates:

Template	Description	System prompt focus
coder	Code assistant	Write clean, tested code
researcher	Research assistant	Search, analyze, summarize
writer	Writing assistant	Clear, concise prose
analyst	Data analyst	Analyze data, find patterns

Using templates

CLI

# Use a template
zeptoclaw agent --template researcher -m "Research Rust async patterns"

# List available templates
zeptoclaw template list

# Show template details
zeptoclaw template show coder

Batch mode

zeptoclaw batch --input prompts.txt --template coder

Template overrides

Templates can override:

• System prompt — Custom instructions for the agent role
• Model — Use a different LLM model
• Max tokens — Adjust response length
• Temperature — Control response creativity

Custom templates

Create a JSON file in ~/.zeptoclaw/templates/:

{
  "name": "devops",
  "description": "DevOps automation specialist",
  "system_prompt": "You are a DevOps engineer. Focus on infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment best practices. Always consider security implications.",
  "model": "claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929",
  "max_tokens": 4096,
  "temperature": 0.3
}

Then use it:

zeptoclaw agent --template devops -m "Set up a GitHub Actions pipeline"

Template + tool whitelists

Combine templates with the delegate tool’s tool whitelist for controlled sub-agents:

{
  "name": "safe_researcher",
  "description": "Research-only agent (no shell or file writes)",
  "system_prompt": "You are a research assistant. Search the web and analyze information.",
  "tools": ["web_search", "web_fetch", "memory", "longterm_memory"]
}

The agent using this template can only access the whitelisted tools.

How templates are applied

1. Template system prompt replaces the default system prompt
2. Model override replaces the config default (if specified)
3. Token and temperature overrides replace defaults (if specified)
4. Tool whitelist restricts available tools (if specified)
5. The rest of the config (providers, channels, etc.) remains unchanged