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Add a section to the PR guide on how to write good titles and descriptions #1845

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Add a section to the PR guide on how to write good titles and descriptions #1845

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099ddc5
Add section to PR guide on titles and descriptions
sirosen Jun 26, 2026
5e6548c
Update getting-started/pull-request-lifecycle.rst
sirosen Jun 26, 2026
cc60068
Move "good-pull-request-metadata" section down
sirosen Jun 27, 2026
a44616a
Refactor the PR "submitting" section per review
sirosen Jul 24, 2026
95b3765
Merge branch 'main' into add-pr-title-and-desc-guidance
sirosen Jul 24, 2026
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Add section to PR guide on titles and descriptions 
Add a short section to the PR guide which covers good titles and
descriptions, at a summary level.

The priority here is (in presentation order):
- explain the rationale / why we care
- demonstrate how a PR title should look
- give some hint as to what a good description will look like

Explaining how to write good technical prose for a PR description is
considered out of scope, which limits the content of the PR description
section.
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sirosen committed Jun 26, 2026
commit 099ddc5a612987bb32a927829e955a38150417be
18 changes: 18 additions & 0 deletions getting-started/pull-request-lifecycle.rst
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Expand Up @@ -203,6 +203,24 @@ should do to help ensure that your pull request is accepted.

#. Proper :ref:`documentation <documenting>` additions/changes should be included.

Write good titles and descriptions
----------------------------------

Reviewers want to be able to understand roughly what your pull request does
before reading the changes.

The title should be a sentence or phrase in the imperative which says what the
pull request does in short form. It should start with ``gh-NNNNNN:``, for pull
requests which close open issues.
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For example, ``gh-12345: Fix bug when spam module is served with eggs``.
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The pull request description field should be a detailed summary.
This is a great place to note caveats, provide links to references, and explain
decisions made in the pull request.
Avoid over-explaining: simpler descriptions are easier to read, so make sure not
to write large descriptions for simple changes.


.. _news-entry:
.. _what-s-new-and-news-entries:

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