My defaults for new projects: one template per project type plus a script that stamps it out.

.\New-Project.ps1 -List
.\New-Project.ps1 -Type node-bot -Name MyBot -Description "Twitch chat bot"

The project is created in a sibling folder of this repo (D:\GitHub\MyBot) unless you pass -Destination. It gets the shared defaults, the template's files, dependencies installed, and a first git commit.

1. scaffold steps from template.json run first (official generators such as composer create-project).
2. templates/<type>/ files are copied in (overwriting, except with -Existing).
3. common/ files are copied in last, only where nothing exists yet, so a template's own files (e.g. AGENTS.md) win.
4. install steps run, then git init + first commit.

.gitignore files are merged rather than overwritten. Tokens {{NAME}}, {{SLUG}} (kebab-case), {{PKG}} (snake_case), {{YEAR}}, {{AUTHOR}} and {{DESCRIPTION}} are replaced in file contents and in file/folder names.

Every generated project gets an AGENTS.md (read by Codex and other agents) and a CLAUDE.md that just imports it (@AGENTS.md), so both carry the same rules:

• Universal rules live once in shared/standards.md and are injected into each AGENTS.md through the {{RULES}} token. They cover security, speed, professional standards (honest reporting, scope, git, code hygiene, docs, privacy and platform terms) and working efficiently. Edit that file to change the rules for every future project.
• Stack-specific rules sit at the bottom of each template's AGENTS.md under "This stack" (e.g. Filament policies and accessibility for Laravel, innerHTML and bundle size for Vite, non-blocking handlers for Node).
• Enforced in CI, not just written down. Every generated workflow uses least-privilege permissions, SHA-pinned actions, cancel-in-progress concurrency, a weekly schedule and a dependency audit (npm audit, pip-audit, composer audit, or NuGet audit in the .NET build). common/ adds a gitleaks secret scan to every project. gitleaks needs no setup on a personal GitHub account; organization accounts need a GITLEAKS_LICENSE secret.

Already-created projects keep the copy they were generated with; re-run with -Existing only fills in files that are missing.

Templates deliberately don't pin dependency versions. install steps pull the latest, and Dependabot config in each template keeps them current.

1. Create templates/<type>/ with the files you want in a new project.

2. Add a template.json:

   {
     "description": "One line shown by -List",
     "requires": ["tool-that-must-be-on-PATH"],
     "scaffold": ["commands run in the empty project folder, before files are copied"],
     "install": ["commands run after files are copied (skipped by -NoInstall)"],
     "notes": ["lines printed at the end"]
   }

3. Add an AGENTS.md that contains {{RULES}} plus a "This stack" section. Don't add a CLAUDE.md; common/ supplies the @AGENTS.md one.

4. Put anything every project should get (editor config, git attributes, base ignores) in common/ instead.

5. Run the template into a scratch folder and check that its own lint/test/build passes before committing.

Commands run in PowerShell inside the new project; use 'single quotes' around arguments that start with @.