Custom templates start from duplicate

Claim: structure should be cloned, not authored

The fastest way to a custom template is not a form builder. It is the note you already use, copied, with one field bolted on. A landlord who always needs a phone number next to the notes. A freelancer who always needs a client PO next to the body. The shape already exists in your habits; the vault just needs to learn it.

Custom templates in NT² Vault start exactly there. Open Settings → Templates, duplicate the built-in note, and add fields from the shared field-type catalog — phone numbers, dates, passwords, custom text. The copy is yours to rename, rearrange, and create items from immediately. No schema language, no redeploy, no permission.

Fields mean things, everywhere

A phone field added to your template is not a text box with a label. It is the same semantic phone type the vault understands everywhere: masked consistently, searchable consistently, presented and shared with the same rules as every other phone field in every other template. Because all templates draw from one field-type system, your custom template inherits years of display, validation, and redaction behavior on day one.

That shared system is also why custom templates survive contact with the rest of the vault. Items you create render in the detail view, the presentation mode, the share sheet, and search results with no extra work — four surfaces, one field set, yours included.

Portable by file

A template you built should leave with you. Export it as a .nt2tpl file: human-readable, importable on any device, shareable with anyone whose vault speaks the same format. A landlord association could publish its move-in checklist as a file; a clinic could hand patients an intake form as a file. The format is the distribution channel — no store, no account, no review queue.

Import is strict on purpose. A file with an unknown field type is rejected with the offending type named, because a template that silently drops fields would corrupt the meaning of everything created from it. Structure you own should fail loudly, not rot quietly.