Using Pipeline Templates

Standardize and distribute reusable pipelines across your team or among multiple teams.

You can share these templates with your teams within a single application, across different applications, or even across different deployments of Spinnaker itself.

Templates can be managed using spin or the UI. To manage templates through the UI, enable the requisite feature flag: hal config features edit --managed-pipeline-templates-v2-ui true

The following diagram illustrates one common workflow for Managed Pipeline Templates (MPT v2). Depending on your deployment, enabled features, and tooling, the lifecycle may vary. For example, Sponnet is optional, and templates may be authored or managed using different tools.

Example Managed Pipeline Template v2 workflow

This diagram is intended as an illustrative example rather than the only supported architecture. In this example, templates are authored directly or generated using Sponnet, managed through the Spin CLI or Deck UI, stored through Gate and Front50, hydrated by Orca, and ultimately executed as pipelines.

Before you begin:

Structure of a pipeline template

The underlying structure of a pipeline template is very close to the pipeline JSON configuration format, viewable in the Deck UI. But it includes information about the variables the template uses.

The things you can do with pipeline templates

Enable Pipeline Templates

Enable the pipeline templates feature in Spinnaker.

Create a Pipeline Template

Create and parameterize a pipeline template from an existing pipeline.

Inherit from a Template or Override It

Inherit or override template features in your pipeline.

Create a Pipeline from a Template

Create pipelines based on a template.

Visualize a Hydrated Pipeline

Visualize a pipeline created from a pipeline template without actually instantiating one.

Last modified June 29, 2026: docs(mpt): add component architecture diagram for pipeline templates (#616) (3478766)