Pull Request Best Practices: Checklist, Template, and Review Tips

A good pull request is not just a place to merge code into the main branch. It needs to help reviewers understand what changed, why it changed, how to test it, and where there is risk.

When a PR is small, well explained, and has the basic checks passing, review moves faster. When it is large, lacks context, and is full of details that could have been caught earlier, the process gets stuck. Reviewers waste time trying to figure out the intent of the change, the author has to explain everything later, and the feedback cycle becomes slower than it needed to be.

This guide gives you a practical checklist for opening better pull requests, a description template, and a few practices to make review clearer for everyone.

Pull request checklist: what every PR should have

• A clear title explaining the main change.
• A short description of the problem or improvement.
• A link to the issue, ticket, bug report, or product context.
• A summary of the main code changes.
• Testing instructions for the reviewer.
• Screenshots or recordings when there is a visual change.
• Notes about risks, migrations, feature flags, or breaking changes.
• Tests, lint, and CI checks passing before requesting review.
• A clear indication of what the reviewer should look at more closely.

Pull request description template

If the team does not have a template yet, start with something simple. The goal is not to create another layer of bureaucracy. It is to avoid making reviewers guess the intent of the change.

## What changed?
Describe the main change in 2 to 4 sentences.

## Why does this change exist?
Explain the problem, ticket, bug, customer request, or technical decision.

## How was it tested?
List automated tests, manual tests, browsers, devices, or environments used.

## Risks and rollout notes
Mention migrations, feature flags, breaking changes, or sensitive areas.

## Review focus
Tell reviewers where you want more attention.

This part matters more than it seems. A study with 80,000 pull requests across 156 GitHub projects found that PR descriptions help preserve the rationale behind changes and that making the expected type of feedback clear is associated with higher reviewer engagement.

1. Keep pull requests small and focused

A PR should solve one clear problem. It can be a bug, a small feature, an isolated refactor, or an infrastructure change. When you mix everything into the same PR, reviewers need to understand several intentions at the same time.

Imagine a PR that fixes a checkout bug, changes the page layout, and also refactors the authentication layer. Even if each change makes sense, reviewing everything together increases the risk that someone will miss something important.

Smaller PRs are easier to review, test, and revert. They also reduce the time spent waiting for approval. If the change is getting large, look for a way to split it into stages: preparation, main change, and cleanup.

2. Explain why, not just what changed

The diff shows what changed. The PR description should explain why the change exists.

A title like “fix bug” barely helps. A title like “Fix incorrect shipping cost for express delivery” already gives better direction. The full description should answer a few basic questions:

• What problem does this PR solve?
• What behavior was expected?
• What was the current behavior?
• Which files or flows were changed?
• Is there any production risk?

GitHub treats pull requests as the space where teams discuss and review changes before merge. GitHub’s own documentation describes a PR as a way to propose, review, and discuss changes before they enter the project. If the description does not provide context, that space starts off badly.

3. Make the PR easy to review

A good PR reduces the reviewer’s work. That means the reviewer should not need to open five different tools to understand what happened.

A few things help a lot:

• Add screenshots or short videos for UI changes.
• Explain how to test locally.
• Mention if there is a migration, flag, or new configuration.
• Call out files that deserve special attention.
• Separate mechanical changes from logic changes.

If you ran an automated refactor or formatted several files, say so. That way, reviewers know which parts require attention and which only need a quick check.

4. Do a self-review before requesting review

Before calling other people in, review your own PR as if you were the person approving the change. This habit helps find simple mistakes and avoids comments that could have been resolved in a few minutes.

During self-review, check:

• Whether the PR is still focused on one main change.
• Whether there are logs, temporary comments, or dead code.
• Whether function, variable, and file names are clear.
• Whether the tests cover the main path and error cases.
• Whether the PR description still matches what was implemented.

Review the entire diff in the platform where the PR was opened, not just in the editor. Sometimes the problem becomes clearer when you see the change the same way it will be reviewed.

5. Use draft PRs when the change is not ready yet

A draft PR is useful when you want early feedback, but the change is not ready for approval yet. It can be a good option for larger changes, architecture decisions, or integrations with many unknowns.

Use a draft PR to validate the direction of the change before final review. The important thing is to make clear what you expect at that moment:

• “I want feedback on the approach.”
• “Tests are still missing, but the main structure is here.”
• “I need to validate whether this path makes sense before continuing.”

When the PR is ready for final review, change the status and update the description.

6. Request review from the right people

Not every PR needs to go through the same people. Calling too many people can slow things down more than it helps.

Choose reviewers based on the type of change:

• Domain change: call someone who knows that business rule.
• Infrastructure change: call someone who understands deploy, CI, or observability.
• Security change: call someone with context on authentication, authorization, or sensitive data.
• Visual change: call someone who can validate behavior and UX.

If the repository uses CODEOWNERS, use it to automate part of the selection. Just be careful not to turn every PR into a queue with five mandatory approvals for no reason.

7. Let CI and automation catch the repetitive work

People should not spend time commenting on formatting, out-of-order imports, broken tests, or simple lint rules. These things should show up earlier, in automatic checks.

A good PR flow usually runs:

• formatter and linter;
• unit and integration tests;
• coverage check when it makes sense;
• secrets and vulnerable dependency scan;
• build or package validation;
• AI review rules when the team uses this kind of layer.

If the PR does not pass the basic checks, it should not go to human review yet. That may sound strict, but it prevents the team from wasting time on problems automation has already found.

8. Respond to feedback clearly

Getting a comment on a PR is not a dispute. If the feedback makes sense, adjust it and respond objectively. If you disagree, explain why clearly and bring the technical context behind the decision.

A few simple replies work well:

• “Good catch, I adjusted it here.”
• “Makes sense. I added a test for this case.”
• “I think keeping it this way is better because of X. Do you see any risk?”
• “I did not understand this point. Can you give an example?”

The worst path is treating review as a personal attack. The second worst is accepting everything without understanding it. A good review improves the code and also keeps the team more aligned for the next PRs.

9. Review other people’s PRs with context

When it is your turn to review, avoid vague comments. “I do not like this” or “this looks weird” does not help much. Explain the problem and, when possible, suggest a path.

Prefer comments like:

This method is mixing validation and persistence.
I think it would be easier to test if we separated these two parts.

Or:

This case seems to break when the user has no registered address.
Should we add a test for this scenario?

Make clear what needs to be adjusted before merge and what is only a suggestion. Not every comment needs to block the change.

10. Use metrics to find bottlenecks in the PR flow

If the team feels that PRs are taking too long, look at the flow with simple data. You do not need to start with a complex dashboard.

Track things like:

• average time to first review;
• average time to merge;
• average PR size;
• number of review cycles;
• percentage of PRs stuck for more than 24 hours;
• types of comments that appear frequently.

If the same comments appear across several PRs, maybe the team needs an automatic rule, a documented standard, or a better example in the repository.

How Kodus helps with the pull request flow

Kodus enters the PR flow as an AI review layer. It can review pull requests automatically, leave inline comments, apply team-specific rules, and point out risks before a person spends time reading the entire diff.

In practice, teams use Kodus to review security patterns, repeated implementation problems, cross-file risks, and whether the change follows what was requested in an issue, spec, or acceptance criteria. This makes the PR easier to review because the reviewer starts with more context and fewer repetitive problems to clean up.

Kodus is open source, available on GitHub, and supports BYOK. That way, the team can use its own model key, choose the provider, and track cost directly in the provider.

FAQ about pull request best practices

What are the main pull request best practices?

The main best practices are keeping PRs small, writing a clear description, explaining the reason behind the change, adding testing instructions, running checks before requesting review, and responding to feedback with context. A good PR should make the reviewer’s work easier.

What is the ideal size for a pull request?

There is no single rule for the ideal PR size, but smaller PRs are usually reviewed faster. As a practical rule, when a PR mixes bug fix, feature, refactor, and visual change, it is a sign that it should probably be split.

What should a pull request description include?

A good description should include what changed, why it changed, how it was tested, what risks exist, and where the reviewer should pay more attention. For visual changes, screenshots or short videos help a lot.

When should I open a draft pull request?

Use a draft PR when the change is not ready for merge yet, but you want feedback on the approach. It is useful for validating technical direction, sharing context early, and avoiding rework on larger changes.

How do I make a pull request easier to review?

Keep the PR small, explain the context, run checks first, add tests, highlight risks, and say exactly where you want feedback. Reviewers should be able to understand the intent of the change without having to ask everything again.

How can AI help with pull request review?

AI can help by reviewing the PR before human analysis, pointing out risks, repeated problems, team standards, and possible cross-file impacts. It works best as support for reviewers, not as a replacement for human decision-making.

Conclusion

A good pull request reduces the reviewer’s effort. It shows the intent of the change, limits the scope, explains how to test it, and makes clear where there is risk.

When the team treats PRs as part of engineering work, not just as a step before merge, review becomes faster and more useful. Less guessing, fewer repeated comments, more context to decide what really needs to change.