Using Artifact Templates

Find a ready-made artifact and put it to work in your project — no setup from scratch.

Artifact templates are single-artifact blueprints published to the Obvious community. Browse them on the Templates page (/templates), preview them before you commit, and add one to your project in a few clicks. This guide walks you through the whole flow.

Find artifact templates on the Templates page

The Templates page is where community-published artifact templates live. Open it by clicking Templates in the main sidebar, then select Artifact from the type dropdown to filter to artifact templates.

Each card shows a preview image, the template's title, its category, and the creator's name. Obvious shows the most-used templates first by default, so the ones other teams have found valuable surface early.

Preview a template before using it

Click any template card to open its detail page. You'll see:

• A live preview of the template's contents

• The template's title, description, category, and tags

• Creator information

• The number of teams that have used it

The preview is interactive. Use the Contents sidebar on the right to navigate between the artifacts inside the template. Obvious renders each artifact type natively — documents and markdown files show formatted text, workbooks show a data grid, kanban boards show columns and cards, dashboards show their layout, canvases show element counts, and images render directly. Gallery and form views show a preview based on their connected sheet data.

On mobile, tap the Contents button below the header to open the contents menu and select an artifact to preview.

Use a template

When you're ready to add the template to your project:

1. On the template detail page, click Use Template.

2. In the dialog that appears, choose a tab: select Add to existing project to pick a project from the list, or select Create new project to enter a new project name.

3. Click Use Template. Obvious adds the artifact to the chosen project immediately.

The artifact is a full copy — you own it and can edit it freely. Changes you make don't affect the original published template, and updates the template author publishes later won't affect your copy.

Note: Artifact templates are separate from project templates. Project templates create an entire new project with multiple artifacts. Artifact templates add a single artifact to an existing project. If you're looking to start a whole project from a template, use the project templates section on the Templates page.

Save a template to your workspace

If you want to keep a template available for future use without creating an artifact right now, click Save to Workspace on the detail page. Obvious saves a private copy of the template to your workspace's Templates page. You can use it any time from there.

Saved templates don't stay in sync with the original — saving captures the template at the version that was published when you saved it.

Publish your own artifact template

If you've built an artifact worth sharing, you can publish it to the community from your template settings.

1. Open the artifact you want to share, then click the ⋯ menu and select Save as Artifact Template.

2. Give the template a name, summary, and category.

3. Set visibility to Workspace or leave it private while you prepare it.

4. To publish it to the community, open the template from your Templates page, go to Settings, and in the settings sidebar set the visibility dropdown to Public. This immediately makes the template available in the community marketplace.

Published templates appear in the Templates page under the Artifact tab and are available to anyone with access to the community marketplace. To unpublish, return to the template's Settings sidebar and change the visibility back to Workspace or Private. This removes it from the community marketplace immediately, but doesn't affect copies others have already saved or used.