CFA Reference: Xcode Templates

Formal CFA AI Toolkit for iOS Documentation · Reference 21 of 26

The toolkit installs three native templates into Xcode's File → New → Project chooser. Each creates a new, runnable CFA app; none modifies an existing project.

Definitions

CFA App: The general-purpose foundation. A tab bar, a launch refresh, a real public-network request, a JSON file cache, retry and failure states, persistent colour themes and focused tests. It is maintained directly in its .xctemplate folder.
Habit Tracker: Habit tracking, daily progress, streaks and SwiftData persistence. Generated from the Habit Tracker Starter App.
Day Streak: Daily multiplication practice with reusable streak behaviour. Generated from the Todays Twenty Starter App; it is not a blank streak-only foundation.
CFA-TEMPLATE.json: The template's metadata file, recording product cooperative-feature-architecture and version 1.

Rules

Install with Install Xcode Template.command from the toolkit root, then quit and reopen Xcode.
Choose File → New → Project → iOS → CFA App, Habit Tracker or Day Streak, then enter your product name and organisation identifier.
Templates live in Project Templates/iOS/Application/ after installation.
Do not hand-edit generated template sources. Edit the Starter App and run python3 scripts/sync-habit-template.py or python3 scripts/sync-day-streak-template.py; add --check to detect stale output.
Running the installer again updates CFA-installed templates, keeps backup copies, and refuses to replace a same-named template from another source.

Decision rules

When you want to learn CFA structure, choose CFA App.
When your product tracks habits, choose Habit Tracker.
When you want the multiplication-practice experience, choose Day Streak.
When you need charts and a StoreKit example, open the Habit Tracker Pro Starter App; it is not an installer template.

Example

The CFA App template's GitReposFeature is a concrete @MainActor @Observable Feature. It keeps repos, isRefreshing and refreshError as separate values, depends on a GitReposProvider and a Repo cache through its initialiser, and stores its startup task with @ObservationIgnored. Its AppModel starts launch work like this:

Repository excerpt from the CFA App template's AppModel.swift

func applicationDidFinishLaunching() {
    guard !hasFinishedLaunching else { return }
    hasFinishedLaunching = true

    gitReposFeature.startLoading()
}

Compare it with the compiled AppModel in Reference 4.

Common mistakes

Expecting Day Streak to be an empty app.
Editing the generated Habit Tracker template instead of its Starter App.
Forgetting to reopen Xcode after installing.