Todolist and Card Table Templates

[thehale]

The template library holds three kinds of template. Basecamp's own navigation separates them, and the CLI did not: templates list meant project templates, templates library meant to-do list templates, and nothing in either name said so. You found out by running one and reading what came back.

This groups the commands by the kind they act on, adds card table templates, and adds a way to turn work you already have into a template.

The command tree

basecamp templates projects     list show create update delete construct construction
basecamp templates todolists    list create duplicate duplication
basecamp templates card-tables  list create duplicate duplication

basecamp todolists   templatify <id> --in <project>
basecamp todolists   templatification <id> <templatification_id> --in <project>
basecamp card-tables templatify <id> --in <project> [--move-cards-to-triage]
basecamp card-tables templatification <id> <templatification_id> --in <project>

Nothing that shipped before stops working. Every flat spelling (templates list, templates show, templates create, templates update, templates delete, templates construct, templates construction, templates library, templates copy, templates copy-status) still resolves, and copy and copy-status also work as aliases inside the grouped paths. templates library maps to templates todolists list.

Naming

Three asynchronous operations now read the same way, each status command named after the record it polls:

construct   -> construction
duplicate   -> duplication
templatify  -> templatification

duplicate follows the product, which calls the operation Duplicate everywhere it appears. The API resource stays copies and the SDK operation stays CreateLibraryCopy; that separation is deliberate and matches what the front-end already does, where the UI says Duplicate and the route says copies.

templatify and templatification are coined words, and they are the only honest ones available. The product has no name for this operation at all, so rather than borrowing an unrelated English word that would read ambiguously next to todolists' other verbs, the CLI takes the resource noun. The help text carries the definition at the point you meet it.

A card table group

There was no home for actions on a card table itself. cards manages what is inside a board, and its --card-table flag only picks which board to look in. basecamp card-tables is that home, and it starts with one verb because a command group is a resource identity rather than a subcommand quota. messageboards has exactly one action for the same reason.

Duplicating names the project, not the container

duplicate sends the destination project and Basecamp resolves the container from the template's kind: a to-do list into the project's To-dos tool, a card table onto its dock. --todoset still pins the container when a project has more than one to-do set, and still checks that it belongs to the project and is enabled, because a clear message beats a 404. card-tables duplicate has no container flag, because a project has exactly one dock.

Verification

Unit tests cover request shape and output rendering. e2e covers error paths, flag surface and help.

Run against a live server with a seeded database:

• templatify <id> with no flags sends {}. The template came back carrying the source's title, "Strategy ideas".
• card-tables templatify on the same board twice, with and without --move-cards-to-triage. With it, all 7 cards including one under an on-hold container are in Kanban::Triage. Without it, Triage 1, Column 4, NotNowColumn 1, OnHold 1. The two results differ, so the flag reaches the wire rather than being dropped.
• templatification on both kinds reports a real template name and id, and the matching destination_todolist / destination_card_table is populated, so neither falls through to the generic completion message.
• templatification with its two ids transposed exits 2 with not_found, rather than reading a different record.
• templatify on a recording that cannot be templatified exits 4 with forbidden, which is a different code and shape from the transposed case, so the two stay distinguishable.
• templates todolists create, templates todolists list and templates card-tables list all succeed, and everything created during the run appears in the listings.
• stderr was empty on every command, including both failures.

Depends on

basecamp/basecamp-sdk#877

Three commits use SDK operations added in basecamp-sdk#877 and do not compile against the current release. Bump go.mod before merging.

[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

The pinned SDK leaves the CLI uncompilable, and coverage, test, completion-breadcrumb, and documentation fixes remain unresolved.

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Pull request overview

This PR groups template commands by kind and adds card-table templates plus templatification workflows while preserving legacy aliases.

Changes:

• Adds grouped project, to-do list, and card-table template commands.
• Adds duplication and templatification operations, including card triage support.
• Updates registrations, documentation, generated surfaces, tests, and smoke coverage.

File summaries

File	Reviewed changes and findings
skills/basecamp/SKILL.md	Documents grouped commands and aliases. Nit (1 vote, line 1022): document card-table compatibility aliases.
internal/commands/todolists.go	Registers to-do-list templatification commands.
internal/commands/templates.go	Implements template operations. Critical (3 votes, line 148): bump the SDK and refresh provenance/checksums; the current pin leaves the CLI uncompilable. Moderate (2 votes, line 1128): add card-table templatification tests. Moderate (1 vote, line 267): add card-table creation tests. Nit (1 vote, line 148): update API coverage. Moderate (1 vote, line 330): preserve the destination project in completion breadcrumbs.
internal/commands/templates_test.go	Adds request and output tests.
internal/commands/commands.go	Updates the command catalog. Nit (1 vote, line 46): update the stale API coverage matrix and summary.
internal/commands/commands_test.go	Updates command registration fixtures.
internal/commands/cardtables.go	Adds the card-tables command group.
internal/cli/root.go	Registers card-tables at the root.
e2e/templates.bats	Adds CLI surface and validation coverage. Nit (1 vote, line 359): rename the duplicated test case.
e2e/smoke/smoke_lifecycle.bats	Excludes new mutations from lifecycle smoke coverage.
e2e/smoke/smoke_account.bats	Adds account-level template smoke coverage.
.surface	Updates generated command and flag metadata.

Review details

Suppressed comments (6)

e2e/templates.bats:359

• This test name is duplicated at lines 302 and 359, so the Bats report cannot distinguish the template-group help check from the root card-tables help check. Rename this newly added case to describe the root command explicitly.

@test "card-tables without subcommand shows help" {

internal/commands/commands.go:46

• The new SDK-backed methods also leave the coverage matrix stale: API-COVERAGE.md still reports 10 template operations and 192/192 tracked endpoints. The repository's SDK completeness bar in AGENTS.md:160-164 requires a coverage row for every new SDK service method; update the matrix and summary alongside this catalog entry.

				{Name: "card-tables", Category: "core", Description: "Manage card tables", Actions: []string{"templatify", "templatification"}},

internal/commands/templates.go:269

• CreateLibraryCardTable is a new SDK operation, but the tests cover only card-table listing and duplication; unlike the to-do-list create path, there is no recording test for this endpoint's request body and rendered result. Add one alongside TestTemplatesTodolistsCreateSendsNameAndDescription so a wrong route or payload cannot pass.

			cardTable, err := app.Account().Templates().CreateLibraryCardTable(cmd.Context(), name)
			if err != nil {
				return convertSDKError(err)

internal/commands/templates.go:149

• The new template operations are not reflected in API-COVERAGE.md: its Templates row still lists 10 operations and omits card-table template reads/creation, to-do-list template creation, and templatification. The repository's SDK sync rule in AGENTS.md:146-164 requires an API-COVERAGE entry for every new SDK method, so update the matrix and totals with this change.

			library, err := app.Account().Templates().GetLibraryCardTables(cmd.Context())
			if err != nil {

internal/commands/templates.go:330

• The completion breadcrumb drops the destination project. cards list always resolves a project before using --card-table (see internal/commands/cards.go:511-525), so without a configured project this follow-up prompts or can target the wrong project and fail to find the duplicated board. Include the destination bucket in the breadcrumb so the generated command is self-contained.

			Cmd:         fmt.Sprintf("basecamp cards list --card-table %d%s", table.ID, contextArgs),

skills/basecamp/SKILL.md:1023

• The implementation exposes copy and copy-status as aliases under both grouped kinds, but this documentation only mentions templates todolists. Please mention templates card-tables here too so users can discover the compatibility spelling for card-table templates.

`copy` and `copy-status` also work inside `templates todolists`. Prefer the grouped,
canonical spellings above when writing new commands.

• Files reviewed: 12/12 changed files
• Comments generated: 2
• Review effort level: Lite (auto)

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[thehale]

🤖 Known and intended. This is stated in the PR description under "Depends on": three commits use operations added in basecamp-sdk#877 and do not compile against the current release, and go.mod is bumped once that merges and the SDK ships. The PR is open ahead of the bump so the surface can be reviewed while the dependency lands, not to be merged at this pin.

API coverage is a fair catch and will be updated in the same commit as the bump, since the endpoint list is only final once the SDK is.

[thehale]

🤖 Fair catch, and this one is not covered by a prior decision. You are right that nothing asserts move_cards_to_triage reaches the wire, and nothing asserts the card-table completion renders a real title and id rather than falling through to the generic line. TestTemplatifyOffersTriageOnlyForCardTables only checks flag registration, which proves the flag exists and not that it does anything.

Both behaviours were verified end to end against a live server, including running the same board twice with and without the flag and diffing the resulting template structure. But that is not in CI, so it does not protect against a regression, which is exactly your point about a silent fallback.

Adding a recording test for both.