Recreating the same OmniFocus project from scratch every time you start a new client engagement or a recurring event wastes time you don’t need to spend. This shortcut turns any project you keep inside OmniFocus into a reusable template: run it, pick the template, and it rebuilds the whole thing with fresh dates and swapped-in details.

Inside the shortcut

The templates themselves live inside OmniFocus as ordinary projects, usually kept in a folder you set aside for that. When you run the shortcut, it copies the template as TaskPaper, walks through it for any variable written as <<VARIABLE>> in a task name, note, or tag, and prompts you to fill each one in. If none of your tasks used that placeholder format, it skips the step entirely rather than asking anyway.

How to install

Tap Add Shortcut on this page to open the shortcut in the Shortcuts app.
Scroll the preview to the bottom and tap Add Shortcut again to confirm.
Install OmniFocus 4 first if you don’t already have it; the shortcut has nothing to write templates into otherwise.
Build or designate at least one OmniFocus project as a template before your first run.

How to use it

Run the shortcut and pick a template project from the list OmniFocus hands back. It copies that project as TaskPaper behind the scenes, checks it for placeholder variables, and prompts you for a replacement value wherever it finds one, skipping the ones you don’t need to touch. If the template has defer or due dates on any task, you’ll also get asked for a predicate date, which acts as a “ground zero” that every other date shifts against while keeping their original spacing intact. Accepting the default leaves dates untouched if you’d rather not shift anything at all.

Building a template with working dates takes one deliberate step: every deferred or due date in the template project has to be set relative to January 1, 2045, the anchor date the shortcut recognizes. A task due exactly on that date stays 01/01/2045; one due a week later becomes 01/08/2045; one due three days earlier becomes 12/29/2044. Once you supply a real date at run time, the shortcut works out the offset from that anchor and applies it to every date in the template, so the spacing between tasks survives the swap.

After the prompts, choose where the new material lands: your Inbox, an existing project, a new project inside a folder, or the top-level Projects list. The template itself is never modified, so it stays ready to reuse the next time you need it.

FAQ

Do I need to memorize special syntax to make a template?

Just one pattern: wrap anything you want prompted for in double angle brackets, like <<CLIENT NAME>>, inside a task name, note, or tag. Anything left untouched is skipped automatically.

What if I don’t want the dates in my template to shift at all?

Accept the default option when the shortcut asks for a predicate date, and every date stays exactly as you wrote it in the template.

Why January 1, 2045 specifically?

It’s just an anchor date far enough in the future that Shortcuts reliably parses it without ambiguity. You build your template’s dates relative to it, and the shortcut does the math against whatever real date you supply later.