- [Templates](./templates.md)

- [Managing templates](./templates.md#managing-templates)

- [Persistant and ephemeral resources](./templates.md#persistant-and-ephemeral-resources)

- [Variables](./templates.md#variables)

- Workspaces

Coder admins manage *templates* to define the infrastructure behind workspaces. A Coder deployment can have templates for different workloads.

Coder provides production-ready template [examples](../examples/), but they can be modified with Terraform.

coder templates init

vim <template-name>/main.tf

coder templates <create/update> <template-name>

If you are commonly editing templates, we recommend source-controlling template code using GitOps/CI pipelines to make changes.

Coder supports ephemeral and persistant resources in workspaces. Ephemeral resources are be destroyed when a workspace is not in use (stopped). Persistant resources remain. See how this works for an example "frontend" template:

| Resource | Type |

| :--------------------------- | :--------- |

| google_compute_disk.home_dir | persistent |

| kubernetes_pod.dev | ephemeral |

| └─ nodejs (linux, amd64) | |

| api_token.backend | ephemeral |

When a workspace is deleted, all related resources are destroyed.

Templates often contain *variables*. In Coder, there are two types of variables.

**Admin variables** are set when a template is being created/updated. These are often cloud secrets, such as a ServiceAccount token. These are annotated with `sensitive = true` in the template code.

**User variables** are set when a user creates a workspace. They are unique to each workspace, often personalization settings such as preferred region or workspace image.