Template Actors

[DaveHanns]

Draft of a technical specification. Product rationale, metrics, GTM, and policy decisions live in the PRD.
Sub-issues are coming.

PRD: Store Actor templates (Notion).

What we're building

Move Actor templates into Apify Store as regular open-source Actors (with a Templates category/filter), consolidate all "clone / copy / duplicate" actions into a single "clone" action in Console and the CLI, and let creators mark (TBD*1) an Actor as a template.

Requirements (group by priority)

P0

• Templates category/filter (TBD*1) in Apify Store.
• Migrate existing templates as open-source Actors.
• Clone action in Console and CLI.
• Fix "publish requires at least one build" for templates (which may be abstract, hence "unbuildable").
• Redirect apify.com/templates and legacy template URLs to Store Actor pages.

P0 enables us to convert Apify owned templates to Actors.

P1

• Allow publishers to mark an open-source Actor as a template (TBD*1).
• apify create lists both Apify owned and community templates.
• Attribution: record and show the source template (TBD*2).

P1 enables Creators to publish their own templates.

P2

• Template quality guidelines and review process for community templates (possibly owned by Publishers team)

P3

• Monetisation

To be discussed (referenced above, in addition to open questions in PRD):

• TBD*1: Explicit "Template" flag, or is every open-source Actor implicitly a template?
  Leaning implicit: templates must be open source anyway, creators can clone regardless, and we already allow duplicating open-source Actors. An explicit flag would regress that.
• TBD*2: Is source attribution legally required, or just nice-to-have?
  If not required, likely skip it: discourages publishers from crediting others, raw cloning bypasses it anyway, adds noise, and "template-of-a-template" chaining is unclear.

References

• PRD: Store Actor templates (Notion).
• Related: wizardic apify create command
  • Guided Actor creation flow in apify create (parity with Console wizard) apify-cli#1153.
• Related: apify templates command
  • New apify templates command (list + JSON enum/recommendation discovery) apify-cli#1239.
• Related: wizardic Actor creation flow in Console
  • apify/apify-core#27171

Sub-issues to follow.