Templating with ytt
Concourse deliberately has no built-in templating (see Config Basics for why), so if a pipeline's YAML is getting repetitive, the recommended path is to reach for an external templating tool and render plain YAML before you set the pipeline. These guides use ytt, the Carvel project's YAML templating tool, since it understands YAML structure natively rather than treating it as text.
Both guides follow the same shape: template files in, ytt -f <path> > out.yml
to render, then fly set-pipeline (or a set_pipeline step) on the result.
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Templating a Single Pipeline
Start here. Extract repeated values into a data values file and render a single pipeline with ytt.
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Templating Across Multiple Files
Split a template across multiple files — useful once a pipeline's template grows past what's comfortable in one file — and render them together.
Looking to automate the render-and-set step itself, rather than run ytt locally? See how the Concourse project does it
in set-pipelines.yml, which runs ytt
inside a task and feeds the rendered output straight into set_pipeline steps.
For other approaches to keeping pipeline config maintainable — not specific to ytt — see Managing Pipeline Configurations.