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Beta Inheritance is how you scale your library across customers, departments and specialties without duplicating prompts. A child section or template references a parent via inheritFromId; any field you omit in generation is inherited from the parent’s published version at request time. Override only the fields that materially differ — the rest stay in sync with upstream improvements. Both sections and templates support inheritance via the same inheritFromId mechanism. The override semantics differ slightly between resources — sections inherit instructions field-by-field, templates inherit instructions.prompt and the section composition.
For the full decision matrix on when to inherit vs. author detached, plus the seven canonical override patterns, see the Customization Cookbook.

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Inheriting from an existing section

Instead of writing a section from scratch, you can inherit from an existing one and override only the fields you need. The published version of the referenced section provides the defaults; any field you omit in generation is inherited.
Inherit & override
{
  "name": "HPI (Pediatric)",
  "languages": ["en"],
  "inheritFromId": "<your-section-id>",
  "generation": {
    "instructions": {
      "writingStylePrompt": "Use family-centred language; refer to the patient as 'the child'."
    }
  }
}
Inheritance follows the published version of the referenced section at request time. If the upstream section is republished with improvements, your inherited section will pick them up for any field you have not overridden.

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Inheriting from an existing template

You can create a template that inherits from another template’s published version. Fields you omit in generation are inherited; fields you provide override.
Inherit & override
{
  "name": "Post-Consultation Note (Pediatrics)",
  "languages": ["en"],
  "inheritFromId": "<your-template-id>",
  "generation": {
    "instructions": {
      "prompt": "Produce a pediatric consultation note. Refer to the patient as 'the child'."
    }
  }
}
If you omit sections from generation, the inherited template’s section composition is kept as-is. Provide a sections array if you want to replace the section composition entirely.
Inheritance resolves against the published version of the referenced template at request time. Future improvements to the upstream template propagate to fields you have not overridden.

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Inheriting from a Corti Standard — important caveats

Inheriting from a Corti Standard — silent updates. Corti improves and refines its Corti Standard sections and templates continuously. Updates are typically silent — small prompt refinements and quality fixes ship the same way many small API releases do, without per-change notes. Only clear schema-breaking changes or significant behavior changes are explicitly communicated.Inheritance cannot pin you to a specific upstream version. If your integration requires staying on a specific behavior, do not use inheritFromId against a Corti Standard — instead, re-create the resource as your own by copying its configuration into a POST /documents/sections (or POST /documents/templates) request without inheritFromId. The new resource is yours to version; subsequent Corti updates will not reach it.This caveat applies specifically to inheritance from Corti Standards. When inheriting from sections or templates you yourself authored, your project controls the publish cadence — there are no silent updates from Corti to worry about.