# Idea: Use AI to generate app.yml / standalone.yml templates with multi-language comments

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/idea-use-ai-to-generate-app-yml-standalone-yml-templates-with-multi-language-comments/390203
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** translation
**Created:** [2 december 2025 om 19:41 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/idea-use-ai-to-generate-app-yml-standalone-yml-templates-with-multi-language-comments/390203 "2025-12-02T19:41:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![tom\_eric](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tom_eric/32/527845_2.png) [@tom\_eric](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tom_eric)
#### Post date: [2 december 2025 om 19:41 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/idea-use-ai-to-generate-app-yml-standalone-yml-templates-with-multi-language-comments/390203/1 "2025-12-02T19:41:00Z")

</div>

Hi folks,  
When self-hosting Discourse, most admins edit `containers/app.yml` (standalone template) and related YAML files. The default samples are well commented, but only in English. For non-English admins, this becomes a common source of mistakes—especially because YAML is whitespace-sensitive and many options are subtle.

I recently made a fully commented Chinese version for my own deployment, and noticed there’s already a Chinese snippet in the translated docs, which was really helpful. [Discourse Meta](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-environmental-variables/270832?tl=zh_CN&utm_source=chatgpt.com)  
That made me think: instead of relying on community one-offs per language, could we provide official multi-language commented templates?

**Proposal:**

1. Add an AI-assisted workflow (or script) that takes the default `samples/standalone.yml` / `containers/app.yml` and generates comment translations.

2. Publish a small set of officially supported variants (e.g., en, zh\_CN, zh\_TW, ja, ko, es, fr, de).

3. Keep the YAML keys/values identical; only translate the comments.

4. Make it available in the install guide or `discourse-setup` as an optional output.

**Why this helps:**

- Lowers the barrier for new self-hosters worldwide.

- Reduces misconfiguration caused by misunderstanding comments.

- Makes the “safe defaults” easier to learn without hunting through docs.

- Easy to maintain: translations can be regenerated when templates change.

If people like the idea, I’m happy to share my Chinese commented version as a starting point, or help test an automated pipeline.

What do you think? Would this be useful to include in the [official install](https://meta.discourse.org/t/142537?silent=true) experience?

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/1/6/4/164f2c2382004c1466c3feea8d8864994a104cb8.png)