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When you set up a new project via cdktn init, you can supply one of the built-in templates (e.g. typescript or python) or use a custom-built remote template. Templates scaffold a new CDK Terrain (CDKTN) project, creating the necessary directories and files.

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Create Remote Templates

A template is a directory that contains at least a cdktf.json file, which is required for the cdktn CLI. When users run cdktn init, CDKTN downloads and and extracts a zip archive containing the files for the specified template. To create the project, it then searches all directories and extracts the directory containing the cdktf.json file. This allows you to create content (e.g. a README.md) in the root directory of your remote template that won’t appear in the generated project directory. You can use the library sscaff to scaffold a new project. The sscaff library copies all files into the new project directory while allowing for substitutions and hooks.

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Substitutions

A template can use substitutions for filenames and file content. To specify your own variables, use Hooks. In addition to the built-in substitutions of sccaff, CDKTN supplies variables that you can use in templates.

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User Input

These variables hold user input. For example, you can use them in project files like package.json. CDKTN collects the required data from users when they run cdktn init with the template. The following example specifies that Name and Description are mandatory, but OrganizationName and WorkspaceName will only be required for projects that are set up to use a HCP Terraform remote backend. 
Name: string;
Description: string;
OrganizationName?: string;
WorkspaceName?: string;
There is no way to collect custom user input for templates at the moment.

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Versions

These variables contain correct versions of the packages that are depending on the CDKTN CLI. The package names are provided in the correct format for the given platform. We recommend using these variables as they are provided without adding any custom logic, since the package name and their version schema follow specific conventions. Reference the built-in templates for examples of how you can use version variables. The following example shows some of the variables in TypeScript. 
cdktf_version: string;
constructs_version: string;
npm_cdktf: string;
npm_cdktf_cli: string;
pypi_cdktf: string;
mvn_cdktf: string;
nuget_cdktf: string;

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pre and post Hooks

Hooks allow you to run additional logic before and after the generation of the output.

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Debug Remote Templates

Add console.log() statements to your hook functions. CDK Terrain displays this log output when a user initializes a project from your template. You can also set the environment variable CDKTF_LOG_LEVEL to debug before invoking cdktn init to see more debugging output. The debugging output will be printed on stdout.

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Distribute Remote Templates

You can host your remote template anywhere, as long as it is formatted as a zip archive. GitHub allows users to fetch the repository contents as zip archive, so you do not have to create one manually. You can only specify urls to zip archives, so only url-based authentication mechanisms are supported. If you need support for private packages, please file an issue. The following example shows the URL for the main branch for a remote template GitHub repository. https://github.com/<user or organization>/<repo>/archive/refs/heads/main.zip The following example shows a URL that uses a Git tag. https://github.com/<user or organization>/<repo>/archive/refs/tags/v0.0.1.zip

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Use Remote Templates

The CDKTN community maintains the following remote templates that you can use to set up your project. The following example initializes a new CDKTN project with a remote template. 
$ cdktn init --template https://github.com/<user or organization>/<repo>/archive/refs/tags/v0.0.1.zip