AI Prompt Templates

Feature Name	AI Prompt Templates
Feature ID	CrestApps.OrchardCore.AI.Prompting

This module brings the shared CrestApps.Core template system into Orchard Core and makes prompt templates available to Orchard-managed AI profiles and chat experiences.

When to enable it

Enable AI Prompt Templates when you want Orchard-managed AI experiences to reuse prompt fragments instead of duplicating large system-message blocks in every profile or interaction.

Orchard setup

After enabling the feature:

• AI profile editors can select prompt templates
• chat interaction editors can select prompt templates
• AI profile templates can select prompt templates
• templates discovered from enabled Orchard features become available automatically

The module replaces the default template service with an Orchard-aware implementation and scans enabled modules for prompt files.

Where templates are discovered

Prompt templates are discovered from module files and other registered Orchard template providers. The common Orchard pattern is to place them in a module under:

Templates\Prompts\

Feature-aware discovery means a template is only available when the owning feature is enabled in the tenant.

How Orchard users work with prompt templates

In Orchard editors, prompt templates appear through the Prompt templates picker (Add prompt template) in the relevant AI editor: the Instructions card of AI profiles and profile templates, the Settings tab of chat interactions, and the AI Completion using Direct Config workflow task. Selected templates are rendered in order before the custom system instructions, and each can carry JSON Template parameters. Use them to:

• standardize system prompts across profiles
• compose reusable instructions for chat interactions
• keep profile templates consistent across environments

The picker lists System Prompt templates created under Artificial Intelligence -> Templates plus the file-based templates discovered from enabled modules. Using the picker is described, with a screencast, in the User Manual under Reuse pieces of instructions.

Core documentation

The template engine itself is shared across hosts, so the detailed guidance is published in CrestApps.Core:

• AI templates

That includes:

• template file conventions
• front matter metadata
• Liquid rendering behavior
• template composition and shared rendering concepts

Orchard usage notes

Use the Orchard docs here to understand where prompt templates show up and how they fit into the Orchard editors. Use the Core docs when you need to author complex Liquid templates or extend the shared template engine.

Using renderAITemplate in Orchard scripting

When both CrestApps.OrchardCore.AI and OrchardCore.Recipes.Core are enabled, Orchard scripting gets a renderAITemplate global method for prompt-template files discovered by ITemplateService.

Use the template ID (the file name without the extension), not an AIProfileTemplate record name:

renderAITemplate("customer-support-intro")

To render the template with variables, pass a JSON-style object as the second argument:

renderAITemplate("customer-support-intro", {
  siteName: "Contoso",
  audience: "support agents"
})

Behavior:

• renderAITemplate("template-id") returns the template content as stored by ITemplateService
• renderAITemplate("template-id", { ... }) renders that template and passes the supplied variables into the Liquid context
• the second argument must be an object (or JSON object string) whose property names match the variables used by the template

This method is intended for prompt-template files under Templates\Prompts\. It does not read runtime AIProfileTemplate catalog entries.

This is especially useful with SystemPrompt templates because it lets recipes and Orchard scripting compose reusable system-message fragments without duplicating large prompt blocks.