> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.hazel.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# The base template

> Your firm's default plan: your plan shape, house instructions, firm-specific planning assumptions, and the guardrails no plan may cross.

Set the base template once, so every plan Hazel builds already carries your firm's shape, voice, numbers and rules. The **Base template** is your firm's default plan: what a household's plan looks like when all you know is that they are your client.

It lives in **Settings**, under **Planning**, first under **Plan templates**. Everything here applies firm-wide, and every Client persona is built on it, so a persona carries only what differs.

## What the base template holds

<CardGroup cols="2">
  <Card title="Plan design" icon="table-columns" href="/guides/financial-planning/plan-design/overview">
    The blueprint: sections, tabs, modules, and what each block is told to do.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Hazel instructions" icon="list" href="/guides/financial-planning/settings/personas/instructions">
    Your house guidance in plain English, as a numbered list. It ships empty. Select **Add instruction** to start.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Planning assumptions" icon="hashtag">
    Label and value rows for firm-specific figures the Solver and Market panels do not model.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Guardrails" icon="shield" href="/guides/financial-planning/assumptions/guardrails">
    The never-do rules, firm-wide. A persona can add its own, and no persona, plan, or request can remove one.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

Two more boxes sit below those four:

* **Client disclaimer**: the footer clients read under a plan and in the exported PDF ([Sharing and delivering](/guides/financial-planning/the-plan/sharing-and-delivering)). It opens on Hazel's plain default wording, and nothing reaches a plan until you edit the box.
* **Used by**: the personas still following this design, so a change here reaches all of them. A persona with its own plan design drops off it.

Every edit saves itself, with "Saving…" then "Saved" beside the heading. Changes shape the plans Hazel builds from now on; plans you have already delivered stay as they are.

<Note>
  Instructions are the one part a persona does not add to: once Hazel matches a household to a persona, Hazel follows that persona's list, not the base list. Plan design, planning assumptions and the assumption numbers carry through until a persona changes them; guardrails carry through and stay. See [Inheritance](/guides/financial-planning/settings/personas/inheritance).
</Note>

## Plan design

The upper card carries the **Strictness** dial, plus a **Hazel default** badge while you are still on the shipped design, which places eight of Hazel's nineteen planning modules with strictness **Flexible**. See [Strictness](/guides/financial-planning/settings/personas/strictness).

**Plan layout** below it draws your blueprint: sections as bands, tabs as indented sub-bands, blocks as labeled chips. A line under it counts your sections, the modules in play and the always-on blocks, then ends in a **See what's left out** link into the layout designer's **Modules** panel.

Two ways to work with it:

* **Select any chip** to edit it in place: **When it appears**, **Instructions to Hazel**, **Leave out when**, then **Done**. No layout designer needed.
* **Select Design layout** for the layout designer, where you add, remove, and reorder modules and blocks. See [Using the editor](/guides/financial-planning/plan-design/using-the-editor).

## Planning assumptions

For example:

| Label                | Value |
| -------------------- | ----- |
| Longevity age        | 95    |
| Healthcare inflation | 5.5%  |
| Education inflation  | 5%    |

Select **Add planning assumption**, give the row a **Label** and a **Value**, and it joins every plan built on this template. The value is free text: a number, a percentage, or a phrase such as "Stop under the first IRMAA tier".

These rows are firm-wide, with no per-row override on a persona. When one kind of client needs a different figure, write it as an instruction on that persona in the same label and value shape, for example "Education inflation: 6%". For a single plan, ask Hazel in that plan's chat.

<Note>
  "Longevity age: 95" belongs in assumptions; "Frame longevity as a spending question, not a portfolio question." belongs in instructions. Where the two disagree on a number the assumption wins, unless the instruction uses the label-and-value shape above.
</Note>

## The order to set it up

<Steps>
  <Step title="Build a plan on the shipped default">
    Your base template arrives with a plan design and the firm-wide solver and market numbers set, but no instructions. Build a plan for a household you know well, from that household's **Financial Planning** tab or the **Financial Planning** page, and read it as a client would. See [Getting started](/guides/financial-planning/overview/getting-started).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Check which template the plan came from">
    Hazel matches each household to the closest of the three Client personas your firm already has. The plan's **Appendix**, under **Applied settings**, names the persona it was built from, or none if the base template alone was used, so you edit the screen that shaped what you read.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Fix the shape first">
    Anything structurally missing or unwanted goes in Plan design.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Then the voice">
    Add instructions for what you would have written differently. See [Instructions](/guides/financial-planning/settings/personas/instructions).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Then the numbers">
    Set [Solver assumptions](/guides/financial-planning/assumptions/solver-assumptions) and [Market assumptions](/guides/financial-planning/assumptions/market-assumptions), then add any firm-specific planning assumptions the panels do not model.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Then the guardrails">
    Write down the rules your firm would never break, however a request is phrased.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Only then build personas">
    Create a persona only where a kind of client needs a different shape or different numbers. See [Creating a persona](/guides/financial-planning/settings/personas/creating-a-persona).
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Tip>
  Test a change by building a plan. The sample plan reads the same whatever you change here. If the household already has a plan, **Regenerate** in the top bar of its **Financial Planning** tab rebuilds it on your current settings.
</Tip>

## Where to go next

* [Plan design](/guides/financial-planning/plan-design/overview)
* [Client personas](/guides/financial-planning/settings/personas/overview)
* [Solver assumptions](/guides/financial-planning/assumptions/solver-assumptions)