We introduce anti-pattern templates, which extend both anti-pattern matching by abstracting ground terms to variables, and unification by negative constraints. For anti-patter templates, we study the satisfiability problem, which asks whether a given template can be instantiated to a valid anti-pattern matching instance.

We show that the satisfiability problem for anti-pattern templates is NP-complete, but it becomes tractable if the number of negation symbols is bounded. Next, we consider anti-pattern templates modulo an equational theory and discuss its relations with other variants of equational frameworks with negative constraints. In particular, we conclude that the satisfiability problem for anti-pattern templates considered modulo associativity becomes undecidable, while it is decidable modulo associativity and commutativity.