What is a Policy Template?
A pre-built, reusable policy configuration for common agent use cases — such as coding assistants, data analysis agents, or DevOps automation. Templates provide sensible defaults that operators can customise for their specific requirements.
WHY IT MATTERS
Not every operator wants to design policies from scratch. Policy templates provide starting points for common agent roles, with appropriate tool allowlists, argument constraints, and rate limits pre-configured.
A template for a 'Coding Assistant' might include: allow read_file and list_directory for any path, allow write_file only to the project directory, deny execute_command except for npm test and npm build, rate-limit to 120 tool calls per minute.
Templates encode best practices. They represent the collective knowledge of how to safely configure tool access for specific agent types, reducing the time from zero to secure deployment.
HOW POLICYLAYER USES THIS
PolicyLayer policies are single JSON documents, so a template is simply a document you reuse. Start from the visual policy builder — each tool gets Allow, Deny, Hide, or Custom — or paste a shared template into the Raw JSON view, adjust tool permissions and constraints for your use case, and save. Starting from a default of deny gives every template a safe baseline.