PR Description Writer Skill

Writes structured, reviewer-friendly pull request descriptions from a diff, commit list, or informal notes. Covers the what, why, and how-to-review so reviewers can start immediately.

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

What changed (paste a git diff, git log --oneline, or describe the changes in plain English)
Why it was changed (the problem being solved or feature being added)
How to test it (any specific steps a reviewer needs to verify it works)
Risk level (low / medium / high — affects how much reviewer guidance to include)
PR type (feature / bug fix / refactor / dependency upgrade / config change / hotfix)
Target branch (e.g. main / develop / release/2.4 — affects risk framing and reviewer guidance)
Linked issue or ticket (e.g. JIRA-1234, GitHub #567 — or "none")

Output Format

Title

A clear, imperative-mood title under 72 characters: [type]: [concise description of what changed]

Examples:

feat: add rate limiting to the public API
fix: resolve race condition in session expiry
refactor: extract payment logic into PaymentService

Summary

2–3 sentences covering:

What this PR does (the change)
Why it was needed (the problem or goal)
The approach taken (at a high level)

Changes Made

Bullet list of specific changes — one bullet per logical change, not per file:

Added [X] to handle [Y]
Refactored [A] to reduce [B]
Removed [C] as it was replaced by [D]
Updated [E] to fix [F]

Screenshots / Demo

[If UI change: include before/after screenshots or a screen recording] [If API change: include example request/response] [If no visual change and no API contract change: omit this section entirely — do not leave it as a placeholder]

How to Test

Step-by-step instructions a reviewer can follow:

[Setup step if needed]
[Action to take]
[What to verify]
[Edge case to check]

Include any specific commands, test data, or environment flags needed.

Testing Checklist

Unit tests added/updated
Integration tests added/updated
Edge cases covered
Manual testing completed
No regressions in existing tests

Reviewer Notes

Flag anything that warrants extra attention:

Areas of uncertainty where a second opinion is welcome
Deliberate trade-offs made (and why)
Out-of-scope items noticed but not addressed
Dependencies on other PRs (link them)

Closes #[issue number] (if applicable)
Related to #[PR/issue number]

Quality Checks

Title is imperative mood and under 72 characters
Summary explains what AND why (not just what)
Changes list describes logical changes (not file-by-file changes)
Title starts with a valid type prefix (feat / fix / refactor / chore / deps / config / hotfix) and is under 72 characters
Testing steps are reproducible by someone unfamiliar with the code
For high-risk PRs, Reviewer Notes flags at least one specific area of concern or deliberate trade-off; for low-risk PRs, Reviewer Notes is either omitted or kept to one line

Anti-Patterns

Do not write a description that only restates what changed — explain why the change was made
Do not skip the testing steps — reviewers need to know how to verify the change works
Do not omit the reviewer notes for high-risk PRs — flag deliberate trade-offs and areas needing careful review
Do not describe implementation details that are obvious from the diff — add context that the diff cannot convey
Do not produce a single paragraph — structure with headers so reviewers can navigate to what they need

Usage Examples

"Write a PR description for these changes" + [paste diff or description]
"Draft a pull request for [feature]"
"I need a PR description — here's what I changed"
"Summarise these commits into a PR description"
"Write the PR body for this branch"

Pr Description Writer