# Meta approves the words. You fill in the blanks.

A WhatsApp template is a message structure Meta reviewed in advance: a slug, a category, one copy per language, and placeholders you fill at send time. Bird ships a managed catalog you can send on your first day, and your own templates once your business account is connected.

## A template is the only way in.

Templates are how the Bird WhatsApp API starts a conversation. Outside an open customer service window, an approved template is the only content WhatsApp will deliver, so the slug you name on the send is the gate. Name it, pick a language, pass the placeholder values, and the send is one call.

## What a template carries.

One identity holding a copy of the message per language. Meta reviews, prices, and pauses each language on its own, so the template's own status is an aggregate and the detail sits one level down.

## Approval is per language, not per template.

A template reading active can still hold a rejected or paused language: the aggregate says something is sendable, and the languages map says which. available_languages is the set a send can resolve right now, and it shrinks for reasons you did not cause when Meta pauses or limits a language.

## Name the language, or let the template resolve one.

A send can pick a language explicitly or leave it to the template. On WhatsApp on_missing_language defaults to fail rather than falling back, because every language is separately approved and separately priced: a silent fallback would send content the recipient did not expect at a rate you did not choose.

## Bird's catalog first, your own next.

Built-in templates ship pre-approved on a WhatsApp Business Account Bird shares across workspaces, so a first send needs no review and no number of your own. Authoring your own is a dashboard step once your business account is connected, and a template you authored has to sit on the same business account as the sender you name.

## Editing an approved language has a budget.

Meta allows one edit per approved language per day, and caps it at ten edits per rolling 30 days. The language reports editable_at when today's edit is spent, so a build can wait rather than guess. A language nobody sends is reclaimed after twelve months and stays recoverable for another 28 days.

## Send an approved template in five minutes.

Bird's managed catalog is already approved and already stocked in dozens of languages, so your first WhatsApp message goes out before you author anything of your own.