Templates and Deployments
In brief
Templates are reusable declarative resource definitions. Deployments select namespaces and reconcile rendered Template output through DeploymentReplicas. Together they are Talon’s declarative distribution mechanism: define a resource once, choose where it should exist, then observe each concrete placement.
This is deliberately a resource-level mechanism. A Template can describe a target resource kind, its metadata, and a templated specification. It is not a base class for Agents, and changing a Template is not agent inheritance or a delta applied at runtime.
What it owns
A Template owns reusable desired content: a target resource kind, metadata, and its templated spec. A Deployment owns placement intent: which Template names should be rendered into the namespaces it selects. A DeploymentReplica represents one concrete rendered placement and records the result Talon observed.
The rendered resource remains an ordinary resource. Its controller and status follow the rules of its own kind; the Deployment does not make it a hidden special case. This separation lets a user inspect both the distribution relationship and the resulting resource instead of conflating them.
Reconciliation and updates
When a Deployment, its selected namespace set, or an included Template changes, Talon reconciles the desired replica set. It renders the Template for each selected target and records DeploymentReplica state. Removed placement or changed input similarly changes the desired set that reconciliation must bring into line.
That flow is intentionally observable rather than magical: the Template captures reusable intent, the Deployment captures where intent should appear, and the replica makes a particular target placement inspectable. The normal resource lifecycle then tells whether the generated resource has reached its own ready state.
Relationships and tradeoffs
Templates and Deployments are valuable when the same resource family should be applied consistently across namespace boundaries. They trade some local autonomy for centrally declared distribution; namespaces can still have their own resources and policies, and a selector makes placement explicit.
Do not use this model to describe one agent’s runtime behavior. Agents and Runtimes owns an Agent’s prompts, model policy, capabilities, and runtime selection. Use a Deployment when the question is “where should this declarative resource be rendered?”—not “how does this agent inherit configuration?”