latitude-dev PR Description Guidelines
The work is done. Now, create a new PR for the current changes. If you're not on a new branch yet, create one first. Then, create the PR. Treat the changes as a real deliverable. The description is the first thing anyone reading this work will see, and most readers will not read the diff line by line.
Audience
Write for someone who:
- Is a developer on this team
- Already knows this repository and its existing architecture
- Has not seen this work before
You don't need to explain the codebase, the framework, or how things generally work in this system. You do need to explain everything new that this PR introduces — concepts, entities, flows, behaviors — clearly enough that the reader understands the change without opening the diff.
Cover only what's in this PR. If it's part of a larger effort (MVP, migration, refactor), one short line of framing is enough. Don't restate the whole project.
Title
The title is a one-line summary of the change. Specific, declarative, imperative mood.
- Good:
Add alert incident lifecycle and worker pipeline - Bad:
Alert work/Various improvements/Updates to alerts module
If the repo uses a prefix convention (feat:, fix:, scoping like [backend]), match it.
What the description must convey
Every PR description, regardless of size, has to answer:
- What this PR does — the actual change, in plain language
- Why it exists — the problem, motivation, or unblock (skip only if the title makes it self-evident)
Beyond those two, include whatever else the reader needs to actually understand the change:
- New domain concepts introduced (entities, events, jobs, statuses, etc.): what they are, when they're created, who produces and consumes them
- Non-obvious decisions: trade-offs, why an alternative was rejected, schema or concurrency choices that aren't visible from the diff
- Deliberate scope cuts and known follow-ups
- Anything a reviewer would otherwise have to reverse-engineer from the code
- How the change was tested or validated, when relevant
If something is only interesting at the code level — naming, file moves, mechanical refactors — leave it in the diff.
Structure
Don't follow a fixed template. The right structure depends entirely on what this PR contains.
Decide the structure by asking: what does the reader need to know, and in what order? Then group that information into coherent sections with headers that describe their actual content. A small bug fix might be three sentences with no headers at all. A PR introducing a new subsystem might have five sections. Both are correct when they match the change.
Order matters: start with whatever orients the reader fastest (usually a summary), put context next, push edge cases, caveats, and follow-ups toward the end.
Linking
If related issues or PRs exist, link them. Use GitHub's keyword syntax (Closes #123, Refs #456) where appropriate.
Style
The description should read like a senior engineer wrote it for a colleague — direct, specific, no filler. The following phrasings mark text as AI-generated and must be avoided:
- Marketing adjectives: "comprehensive," "robust," "seamless," "powerful," "elegant," "sophisticated," "production-ready," "first-class"
- Hedging verbs: "aims to," "seeks to," "strives to" — just say what it does
- Filler verbs: "leverages" / "utilizes" → "uses". "ensures that X" → just state X. "facilitates" → describe the actual mechanism
- Throat-clearing openers: "It's worth noting that," "Importantly,", "In essence,", "It should be mentioned that"
- Closing summaries: "In summary," "Overall," "Ultimately," — stop when you're done
- Vague abstractions: "provides functionality for X" → say what it does. "handles the logic of Y" → say how
- Artificial parallelism: "fast, clean, and reliable" — pick the one that matters
- "Not just X but Y" construction
- "In order to" → "to"
- Restating the prompt or the section header in the first sentence of a section
Write declaratively. "Adds X. X is created when Y happens." Not "This PR aims to introduce X, which would help with Y."
Use prose where bullets would fragment a thought. Use bullets where prose would become a wall. Don't enumerate every file changed.
Use lowercase headings unless the repo's existing PRs use a different convention.
Output
Return the title and description as raw markdown in separate code blocks I can paste into GitHub directly. No preamble, no commentary after the blocks.
If this PR includes noticeable UI work — new views, new sections, visual changes — remind me at the end to attach screenshots or a short screen recording to the PR for reviewer context.