What a template captures
Exactly what is stored, what isn't, and why the omissions are the point.
Checked against the app on 2026-10-12 (1.1).
| Captured | Not captured |
|---|---|
| Sections, and which items are in them | Dates |
| Items — as references to your library, not copies | Destination |
| Quantities and formulas | Trip name |
| Notes, per template | What you'd ticked |
| Custom section names | Trip status |
| Trip tags | Outfits |
| Nominal length in nights | Activities |
| Notes to Self |
The shape of the idea
A template is a trip with the trip-specific parts removed. Everything about how you pack is kept; everything about one particular journey is dropped.
That's why the omissions matter more than the inclusions. A template that remembered your dates would be a copy of a trip. A template that forgets them is a description of how you travel.
A template references the library; it does not copy it
Changed in 1.1. A template's items are your library items — a template is not a second item library. What the template owns is how it wants each one, and that is a closed list of five:
| Per template | |
|---|---|
| Note | A note for this template only |
| Quantity | Its own rule, or a fixed count |
| Critical | Critical here without being critical everywhere |
| Charge reminder | |
| Repack for return |
Plus the row's section and group, which are placements rather than properties. A row carrying any of these is marked Modified for this template. Everything else about an item belongs to the item and is edited from the Item Library or the Sections & Kits Library — there is deliberately no path from a template to editing a library item.
An item typed into a template is staged into the library: saving the template with the checkmark keeps it, closing with ✕ removes it again after a warning.
A template is not a backup. It is independent of the trip it came from, but not of your libraries: Reset Libraries to Defaults deletes saved templates along with everything else in them.
Ticks are never captured
A template always arrives fresh. There is no way to save a half-packed state, which is deliberate: a template carrying someone else's progress would be worse than useless on the night you need it.
Nominal length
Every template holds a length in nights. It does two things at two different moments, and only one of them is obvious.
At authoring time it becomes a trip-duration category that filters which library items seed into the template at all.
At trip creation it pre-fills the return date and seeds the auto-adjust window.
So a "Ski Week" template built without noticing the duration control gets a 3-night item set — the silent default — and later produces a 3-night trip. Neither moment says so.
Quantities travel as rules, not numbers
A template stores the formula, so quantities compute against the dates of whatever trip you make from it. One template correctly clothes a weekend and two weeks.
See Quantity formulas → Templates and length.
Customization survives
Everything you changed is kept: renamed sections, added items, adjusted quantities, notes. That's the whole point — the executive-function cost of setting a trip up gets paid once rather than every time.
Where templates diverge from the library
A template is a snapshot, exactly like a trip. Editing your library does not reach into templates that already exist, and editing a template does not write back.
This is the most common source of the "my three libraries have drifted apart" feeling: the Template, Section and Item libraries are independent snapshots by design, and nothing reconciles them automatically.
Related: Masters and instances · Quantity formulas · Guide: Templates
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