Do I encode it in the template name? Well, somewhat, and not perfectly. The real tracker is a file full of notes; also the salt files that do the work have numbers that group things together. (Those numbers do not appear in the names of the templates.)
I doubt anyone would actually want to copy my scheme, but I’ll outline it since it may give you ideas you can use. It is complicated. Some of my templates are clones of clones of clones of clones of debian-11-minimal. (You’ll eventually want to lay out a tree diagram.)
Everything derives from debian-11-minimal; I first create deb11m-sys-base and put a bare minimum of things on it (like a particular xterm implementation, font that isn’t microscopic, and so fort). That’s number 00…the number appears in the names of the salt files that generate it.
My sys- qubes’ templates are all in the first group, they clone deb11m-sys-base to things like deb11m-usb (for sys-usb). I have other service qubes, their salt files are numbered 01-09.
Qubes that actually have user applications on them are named deb11a- (not m). [There’s enough on this qube I can’t quite call it minimal any more, but it’s still much smaller than the default debian-11 template.] They start with deb11a-base (numbered 10) which is cloned from deb11m-sys-base and their salt files are numbered 10, 20, etc through 90 for basic combinations of firefox and networking; then apps get installed, for instance, on 11 (deb11a-iso-vault) is the template for my vault qube. It has no networking and no browser so it’s in the 10s; but does have keepass installed. The template itself has “iso” in the name for “isolated” which tells me its one of the 10s.
So here’s a key thing: My salt files to generate deb11a-iso-vault are named “tmpl-11-iso-vault*” Note that the salt file names don’t include deb11a in them; that’s because I intend to reuse them for debian 12 when it comes out. The qube names do include the debian version, that way when debian 12 comes out, I can rerun all the salt files and generate a bunch of templates named deb12m and deb12a. Since they’ll have different names I can switch over to using them, at my leisure. What the templates and salt files have in common is “iso-vault.” Which tells me what the template is for and that it’s in the 10s because of “iso” in the name.
That’s probably confusing as hell, but I’ve already written this four times trying to make it clear without bogging you down in a ton of detail.
The MAIN point being that once you go the minimal route, you can pretty much decide for yourself how best to organize this; I know this is actually my third or fourth such scheme since I’ve been seeing what the drawbacks are.