Coder powers secure, scalable development across key industries — automotive, finance, government, and technology — enabling faster builds, tighter compliance, and seamless AI adoption in enterprise-grade cloud environments.
Users with the Template Administrator role or above can create templates within Coder.
From a starter template
In most cases, it is best to start with a starter template.
The template builder is the recommended way to create templates in Coder.
It guides you through selecting a base infrastructure template, adding modules (IDEs, tools, integrations), and configuring your template, all without writing Terraform.
The template builder is enabled by default.
When you select New Template on the Templates page, the builder opens automatically.
The builder guides you through up to five steps:
Select base infrastructure:
Choose a starter template for your target platform (for example, Docker, AWS EC2, Kubernetes).
Each base template provides a working foundation with the Coder agent pre-configured.
Base template parameters(optional): If the selected base template declares configurable variables, you can supply values for them here.
If the base template has no parameters, this step is skipped automatically.
Select modules:
Pick from a curated list of registry modules to add IDEs, AI agents, source control integrations, and other tools.
Modules are grouped by category and filtered for compatibility with the selected base template's operating system.
You can select multiple modules.
Module settings(optional): Configure variables for the modules you selected.
Required variables without defaults must be filled in before you can proceed.
Modules that require secrets (such as API keys) display a notice that developers will be prompted for the value at workspace creation time.
Template customizations:
Set the template's display name, description, icon, and organization, then select Create Template.
After you select Create Template, Coder composes the Terraform configuration server-side, validates it with terraform init and terraform validate, and creates the template.
The generated template is standard Terraform HCL that you can edit later through the dashboard or CLI.
Note
The template builder requires outbound access to registry.coder.com so that terraform init can resolve module sources.
For air-gapped or restricted-egress deployments, visit Air-gapped deployments.
If you select modules that are known to conflict with each other, the builder displays a warning.
Module conflicts do not block template creation, but you should review the warning before proceeding.
Turn off the template builder
Operators can disable the template builder by setting the CODER_DISABLE_TEMPLATE_BUILDER environment variable or the --disable-template-builder server flag.
When disabled, the New Template button links to the starter templates page instead, and the /api/v2/templatebuilder/* endpoints return 404.
Deployments using a self-hosted module registry mirror can set CODER_TEMPLATE_BUILDER_REGISTRY_URL to point generated module source paths at the mirror instead of registry.coder.com.
The value is a bare host, optionally with a port (for example mirror.internal:8443).
A leading http(s):// scheme and trailing slash are stripped, and a path, query, fragment, or credentials is rejected at server start.
Alternative creation methods
The template builder's first step also links to alternative creation paths:
Upload an existing template:
Upload a .tar.gz or .zip of Terraform files you have authored locally.
Browse community templates:
Browse the Coder Registry for community and official templates.
From an existing template
You can duplicate an existing template in your Coder deployment.
This copies the template code and metadata, allowing you to make changes without affecting the original template.
After navigating to the page for a template, use the dropdown menu on the right to Duplicate.
Give the new template a name, icon, and description.
Press Create template.
After the build, you will be taken to the new template page.
From scratch (advanced)
There may be cases where you want to create a template from scratch.
You can use any Terraform provider with Coder to create templates for additional clouds (for example, Hetzner, Alibaba) or orchestrators (VMware, Proxmox) that we do not provide example templates for.
