---
title: "Red Hat Developer Hub software template authoring with rhdh-templates"
description: "Red Hat Developer Hub software template authors often face Nunjucks syntax, uncertain location.yaml placement, and errors discovered only after rendering in the developer portal. The rhdh-templates skill in the RHDH Users Skill Pack equips an AI assistant with RHDH and Backstage conventions, Nunjucks helpers, schema checks, reference templates, and local validation. After installation, it can scaffold repositories, guide interactive parameterization of existing codebases, add template parameters and Scaffolder steps, generate location.yaml, and check templates offline before merge. With an optional reachable RHDH instance, the skill can list active actions, read their schemas, and dry-run execution against the API; the walkthrough uses the Quarkus getting-started quick start and reports a clean validation run as the readiness signal."
---

# Red Hat Developer Hub software template authoring with rhdh-templates

[Red Hat](https://yomu.fyi/company/red-hat) · Kashish Mittal · Sep 7, 2026

**Type:** Announcement

## Summary

Red Hat Developer Hub software template authors often face Nunjucks syntax, uncertain location.yaml placement, and errors discovered only after rendering in the developer portal. The rhdh-templates skill in the RHDH Users Skill Pack equips an AI assistant with RHDH and Backstage conventions, Nunjucks helpers, schema checks, reference templates, and local validation. After installation, it can scaffold repositories, guide interactive parameterization of existing codebases, add template parameters and Scaffolder steps, generate location.yaml, and check templates offline before merge. With an optional reachable RHDH instance, the skill can list active actions, read their schemas, and dry-run execution against the API; the walkthrough uses the Quarkus getting-started quick start and reports a clean validation run as the readiness signal.

## Context

Authors of Red Hat Developer Hub software templates encounter Nunjucks syntax friction, uncertainty about location.yaml placement, and errors that may not appear until a template is rendered. Generic AI coding agents do not provide RHDH- and Backstage-specific conventions.

## Approach / What changed

The rhdh-templates skill provides best-practice guidance, Nunjucks helpers, JSON schema checks, reference templates, and deterministic local scripts. It supports repository scaffolding, interactive conversion of existing codebases, template editing, gotcha fixing, offline validation, and optional API-based action discovery and dry runs against a reachable Red Hat Developer Hub instance.

## Takeaways

- Local validate checks template schema, Red Hat Developer Hub gotchas, and optionally Nunjucks without requiring a running cluster; a clean run reports 0 critical findings.
- Templatize converts an existing repository through interactive parameterization, allowing the author to confirm each mapping rather than accepting speculative YAML.
- list-actions, explain-action, and dry-run use a reachable Red Hat Developer Hub back end and optional API token to inspect actions, read schemas, and test execution.

**Tags:** [Backstage](https://yomu.fyi/topic/backstage), [Nunjucks](https://yomu.fyi/topic/nunjucks), [Red Hat Developer Hub](https://yomu.fyi/topic/red-hat-developer-hub)

- Source: [Red Hat](https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2026/09/07/red-hat-developer-hub-software-template-authoring-rhdh-templates)
- Source URL: https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2026/09/07/red-hat-developer-hub-software-template-authoring-rhdh-templates
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-07T08:00:52.928Z

[Read original post](https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2026/09/07/red-hat-developer-hub-software-template-authoring-rhdh-templates)