A useful pull request template can start with two questions: what does this change do, and how did the contributor verify it? A survey of 80 popular open-source repositories found that templates range from that compact format to detailed, workflow-specific checklists—and 19 of the surveyed repositories had no pull request template at all.
What the 80-repository survey found
Khasky’s September 23, 2026 review examined pull request templates on the default branches of 80 popular GitHub repositories. It reports that 19 repositories had no template, including Vue core, webpack, React Router, Playwright, Express, TensorFlow, DuckDB, and LLVM. That is a finding about this selected sample, not a count of open-source projects generally.
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The remaining examples show no single standard length or format. A recurring compact design asks what changed and how it was tested. Other templates add prompts for contribution type, breaking changes, release notes, reviewer context, or project-specific risks. The review is a snapshot: templates can change, and its material does not establish whether contributors fill them out or whether particular prompts improve reviews. Read Khasky’s survey and examples.
What should a pull request template ask?
Start with the change and its verification
For a small project, a concise starting point is to ask what the pull request does and how the contributor verified the code. Bun’s template wording, reproduced in the survey, is: “What does this PR do?” and “How did you verify your code works?” These prompts give reviewers a summary and a description of checks or other verification without prescribing a large form.
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Add fields only when the workflow needs them
An issue link is useful if the project tracks work through issues. A release-note prompt can help when pull request text feeds release preparation; the survey describes release-note sections in examples including Moby, Terraform, Envoy, Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Zed. Grafana, by contrast, uses pull request titles to generate changelog entries, so its template asks what a feature is, why it is needed, and who it serves.
Other fields can be justified by specific review or routing needs. The survey describes Angular prompts about current and proposed behavior, breaking changes, and pull request type. It notes risk and rollback questions in examples such as Terraform and Envoy, and a .NET servicing template that asks about customer impact, regressions, and risk. Some surveyed templates, including examples attributed to Kubernetes, Django, pandas, and Caddy, request disclosure of AI use. These are examples reported in the survey, not confirmation of each project’s current template.
Why some templates are much longer
Detailed forms can collect information needed to route, assess, or document specialized changes, but length alone does not show quality. Khasky reports a 92-line Kubernetes template with seven headings, including reviewer notes and AI-use disclosure. The article also reports checklist examples of 119 lines for Home Assistant, 91 for Transformers, and 86 for Storybook. Those are the survey author’s line counts, not measures of effectiveness.
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PyTorch is described as offering three selectable templates for different contribution types. This illustrates an alternative to making every contributor answer every question: provide distinct paths when the project handles materially different kinds of work.
When choosing fields, consider whether they elicit information not already supplied by CI, how much effort they impose, whether they fit issue and release workflows, whether they help route or automate work, and what happens if the information is missing. These are practical design questions suggested by the examples, not outcomes measured by the survey.
How GitHub applies pull request templates
GitHub says that when a repository has a pull request template, contributors automatically see its contents in the pull request body. Its documentation supports a template in the repository root, the docs/ directory, or the .github/ directory. Repositories can also keep multiple templates in a PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE directory; contributors can select one using the template query parameter. GitHub notes that templates may ask for a related issue, a description of proposed changes, or reviewer mentions. See GitHub’s instructions for creating a pull request template.
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Should every repository use one?
The survey does not support a blanket rule. Nineteen of the 80 repositories examined lacked a template, but the snapshot does not show why those projects made that choice or whether their contributions suffered as a result. Nor does it identify which prompts contributors answer or establish that a particular template improves review speed or quality.
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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →A template is most useful when it reliably prompts for information maintainers need and contributors can provide. Start small; add a field when it supports a real project workflow, and consider separate templates if contribution types require substantially different information. Remove prompts that duplicate automated checks or do not help reviewers make a decision.
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