Service Template
also called Scaffold, Cookiecutter Template, Software Template
A generator that creates a new service already wired into the organisation's pipeline, telemetry, security and operational conventions.
Templates solve the day-one problem: a new service starts correct rather than starting empty and accumulating correctness through review comments over six months.
The unresolved question every template programme hits is what happens on day two hundred. A generated repository is a copy, so an improvement to the template — a fixed base image, a corrected telemetry configuration, a new required policy — does not reach the two hundred services already generated. Organisations discover this when a vulnerability requires the same edit in two hundred repositories.
The two answers are different in kind. Keep the shared substance in versioned libraries and base images the template merely references, so upgrades propagate through dependency bumps and the template stays thin. Or run automated fleet-wide change — bots that raise pull requests across every generated repository. Mature platforms do both, and treat the ability to change every service at once as a first-class platform capability rather than an emergency measure.