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Using Templates and Sections in the Corti API

Learn how templates and sections work in the Corti API — versioned, UUID-addressed resources you can browse, author, inherit from, and publish for AI-generated medical documentation.

Overview

In the Corti API, Templates define the structure of documents generated by Corti's AI models, and Sections are the building blocks templates are made of. Together they ensure consistency, clarity, and control in AI-supported medical reporting.

Templates and sections are first-class API resources: each has a UUID, supports versioning and publishing, and can be created and managed by you — not just read. They live at two dedicated endpoints:

Resource

Endpoint

What it is

Sections

/documents/sections

Defines one part of a document: its heading, prompts (content, writing style, misc), and a typed output schema

Templates

/documents/templates

An ordered composition of sections, plus optional template-level instructions

Sections and templates authored here are used with the document generation endpoint POST /documents — see How to Generate Documents using Corti's API.

⚠️ Used the previous templates system? The old surface — string templateKeys like corti-soap, GET /templates, and GET /templateSections — is part of Documents Classic, which is deprecated and shuts down on January 18, 2027. The templates listed in our older article keep working until then. See the migration guide on docs.corti.ai for the field-by-field mapping.

Key Features

Two-sided library

Corti-curated Standards (source: corti) appear alongside your own resources (source: user) in the same list responses

Full authoring lifecycle

Create, read, update, version, publish, and delete your own sections and templates via the API

Typed outputs

Each section declares an outputSchema (string, number, boolean, array, object) controlling its output shape and formatting

Inheritance

Create variants from Corti Standards (or your own resources) with inheritFromId — override only what you need

Per-locale resources

Each Standard is published as a separate resource per language (and where applicable, per region and specialty), each with its own UUID

Sections

A section defines how one part of a document is generated. Every section carries:

  • heading — the section title as it appears in the document

  • instructions — three prompt fields:

    • contentPrompt — guides what input content belongs in the section

    • writingStylePrompt — guides tone and style (e.g. telegraphic, plain language)

    • miscPrompt — free-form additional instructions

  • outputSchema — a typed schema controlling the section's output: string, number, boolean, array, or object, with formatting primitives like itemFormat and fieldFormat for advanced text rendering

Templates

A template composes sections into a fixed, ordered structure. When creating a template you define its name, supported languages, optional template-level instructions, and the ordered list of sections:

{
   "name": "Allergy follow-up note",
   "languages": ["en"],
   "generation": {
     "instructions": { "prompt": "Produce a focused follow-up note for an allergy consultation." },
     "sections": [
       { "sectionId": "<your-section-id>", "orderIndex": 0 },
       { "sectionId": "<your-section-id>", "orderIndex": 1 },
       { "sectionId": "<your-section-id>", "orderIndex": 2 }
     ]
   }
 }

Versioning and Publishing

Your sections and templates have an explicit version + publish lifecycle. You can iterate on drafts freely — previously published versions keep serving your production traffic until you publish a new version. This means you can test changes without affecting live document generation, and every generation call records exactly which template version produced the document.

Browsing the Library

Use the list endpoints to discover what's available — Corti Standards and your own resources side by side:

Query param

Use for

source

corti to return only Corti Standards, user to return only your own

lang

Locale (BCP-47, e.g. en, de). Repeatable.

region

Region-specific variants (ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, e.g. USA, BEL). Repeatable.

specialty

Specialty-specific variants (e.g. dermatology). Repeatable.

label

Filter by key:value label — e.g. family:corti-soap lists all sections belonging to the SOAP family across languages. Repeatable.

published

Typically true when discovering resources for use

curl "<https://api.eu.corti.app/v2/documents/sections?source=corti&lang=en&published=true>" \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" \
   -H "Tenant-Name: <tenant-name>"

The same filters work on LIST /documents/templates.

💡 Important: each Standard exists as a separate resource per locale — the English corti-hpi and the German corti-hpi share the same family label but have different UUIDs. Always include the lang filter when resolving UUIDs, and cache the (family, lang) → id mapping in your service so you don't need a list call on every generation request.

The full Corti Standards section library — from corti-hpi and corti-subjective through corti-plan, corti-discharge-summary and beyond — is documented on docs.corti.ai, with each section's title, output type, and description.

Creating Your Own (and Inheriting from Corti's)

Author your own sections and templates with POST /documents/sections and POST /documents/templates. The most efficient path for customization is often inheritance: pass a Standard's UUID as inheritFromId and override only what you want to diverge.

{
   "name": "HPI (Pediatric)",
   "languages": ["en"],
   "specialties": ["pediatrics"],
   "inheritFromId": "<your-section-id>",
   "generation": {
     "instructions": {
       "writingStylePrompt": "Use family-centred language; refer to the patient as 'the child'."
     }
   }
 }

Inheritance rules worth knowing:

  • instructions overrides are per-field partial — fields you omit continue to track Corti's improvements as new versions are published.

  • outputSchema overrides are wholesale — your schema fully replaces the inherited one; partial schemas are not merged.

  • To fully decouple from a Standard, re-create the resource with its configuration without inheritFromId — the copy is yours to version, and future Corti updates won't reach it.

For prompt-writing guidance, see Document Generation: Customizing Sections — Best Practices.

Where to Go Next

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