template-kit/manifest-invalid

manifest.json is the one file that says which sections make a page, and in what order. Every check on it lands under this id.

Rule

A template folder (templates/<key>/) must have a manifest.json at its root, and that file must:

• exist — a template folder with none at all reports this once, naming the missing file;
• parse as JSON, and satisfy the manifest shape — key, name, deliverable_type, and an ordered sections array of section instances (section, instance_id, options, locked, required, reorderable);
• agree with its own folder — the manifest’s key must match the template folder name it lives in;
• reference real sections — every sections[].section must resolve to a section this workspace actually has;
• override only what’s real and overridable — an instance’s options may only name an option the target section declares, only when that option is not template_overridable: false, and only with a value that actually differs from the section’s own default;
• satisfy the whole-composition nav contract — the cross-section rules that need the full, resolved section set rather than any one section in isolation.

Every violation collects into the same run; a manifest with several wrong references reports all of them together.

Reason

A section’s own four files describe that section in isolation — they say nothing about which page it appears on, in what order, or which of its options a specific template has chosen to lock in. manifest.json is where that composition is declared, and it is the only place a downstream consumer (the publisher, the fill pipeline, the editor) can go to learn a template’s actual shape. A manifest that references a section that doesn’t exist, or restates a default as if it were an override, is a template whose real composition nobody can trust the manifest to describe.

Fix

Read the message: it names the template, the section instance, and what’s wrong. Missing entirely, add one. Otherwise, fix the field the message points at.

Before

templates/acme-modern/
  manifest.json
  sections/
    hero/

templates/acme-modern/manifest.json

{
  "key": "acme-classic",
  "name": "Acme Classic",
  "deliverable_type": "single_property_website",
  "sections": [
    { "section": "hero", "instance_id": "hero-1", "options": {}, "locked": [], "required": true, "reorderable": false }
  ],
  "reconcile": []
}

Template "acme-modern": manifest key "acme-classic" does not match the template folder name "acme-modern".

After

templates/acme-modern/manifest.json

{
  "key": "acme-modern",
  "name": "Acme Modern",
  "deliverable_type": "single_property_website",
  "sections": [
    { "section": "hero", "instance_id": "hero-1", "options": {}, "locked": [], "required": true, "reorderable": false }
  ],
  "reconcile": []
}

See also

• The schema system — what a manifest declares and the type it’s validated against.
• schema-invalid — the same kind of cross-reference check, one level down, on a single section’s own contract files.
• no-templates — reported instead when the workspace has no templates/<key>/ folder to check at all.