| name | open-pr |
| description | Open a pull request that follows the repo's conventions. Reads the PR template from .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md, fills it with contextualized content (not enumerations), links tracker tickets, writes testing notes, and uses /flagrare:write-docs style for the description. Use when the user says 'open a pr', 'create pr', 'push and pr', 'submit this', 'open pull request', or any variation. Also triggers when code is ready to ship and the user wants to get it reviewed. |
Open PR
Create a pull request that reads like a human wrote it.
The goal is a PR description that a reviewer can scan in 30 seconds and understand: what changed, why, and how to verify it works. No file-by-file enumerations. No bullet-point dumps of every touched line. Context and narrative.
REQUIRED BACKGROUND: Invoke /flagrare:write-docs before writing the PR body. A PR description is a tiny how-to/explanation doc, and the same craft applies: lead with the reader's situation, let prose carry causality, put context at the point of need. This skill owns the PR mechanics and the repo's conventions; write-docs owns making the prose readable. The "Writing style" section below applies that craft specifically to PRs, read both.
Workflow
Step 1: Understand what happened
Gather the raw material:
git log --oneline $(git merge-base HEAD main)..HEAD
git diff --stat $(git merge-base HEAD main)..HEAD
git diff $(git merge-base HEAD main)..HEAD
Also check the branch name for a ticket key (e.g., SKU-478/fix-menu-disabled).
Step 2: Learn the repo's conventions
A template tells you the sections; recently merged PRs tell you the structural conventions the template can't encode, the title prefix format, which section headings the team uses, how they link tickets and designs, what labels they apply. Read both for that skeleton only.
cat .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md 2>/dev/null \
|| cat .github/pull_request_template.md 2>/dev/null \
|| ls .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE/ 2>/dev/null
gh pr list --state merged --limit 5 --json number,title,body 2>/dev/null
Borrow the team's skeleton: section names, title format, ticket-linking convention, labels. Match those exactly.
Do NOT imitate their level of detail, and do NOT copy enumeration. This is the trap that produces bad PR descriptions. Most teams' merged PRs are file-by-file changelogs, a ## Changes section with a bullet per file, per function, or per internal symbol (Added getFooHelper, Migration 0011, service now returns shipId). That is exactly the style to avoid. The existing PRs being enumerated does not make enumeration the house style you should match, it makes it the habit this skill exists to break. Take the section headings from the recent PRs and fill them with context-first prose per Step 4, no matter how enumerated the existing PRs are.
If no template exists, use a minimal structure (title, description, testing notes) with the section headings the recent PRs use. Follow the template's section contract exactly; just never inherit its enumeration.
Step 3: Fetch linked context
If a ticket key was found (branch name, commit messages, or user-provided):
- Fetch the ticket via the best available tool (MCP for the tracker platform, CLI, or WebFetch). Use the same detection logic as
/flagrare:intake Step 0.
- Use the ticket's title, description, and acceptance criteria to explain the "why" in the PR description.
If a design link (Figma, etc.) appears in the ticket, note it in the PR for visual reference.
Step 4: Write the PR body
The hard rule, before anything else: the description explains what changed, why, and how to verify it, in prose. It is never a list of files, functions, migrations, or internal symbols, the diff already shows those. If you find yourself writing "added X helper, updated Y service, changed Z schema", stop: that is the diff talking, not you. If you cannot describe the change without listing the files it touched, you do not yet understand it well enough to write the PR, go back to the diff and find the one or two sentences that explain what it actually does for someone.
Fill the template section by section, applying the write-docs craft from the REQUIRED BACKGROUND above. For each section, the principle is the same: write like you're explaining this to a teammate over coffee, not generating a report. Lead each section with what the reader needs to know, let a sentence carry the because, and only use a bullet list when the items are genuinely parallel (a list of independent fixes in one PR, say) rather than a single decision sliced into fragments.
Anchor to behavior, not coordinates. Describe what the code now does and why, never where the lines moved. "Line 47", "renamed the variable on line 83", "updated the import block" are all stale the moment you push another commit, and they make the reviewer hunt. The diff already shows the where; your job is the what and why. Likewise, don't transcribe the diff into prose, if a reviewer can get it from the diff, leave it to the diff.
Title: Short, imperative. Under 70 characters. Prefixed with ticket key if the repo convention does that.
Description sections:
-
What changed (product perspective): One paragraph. What does the user/partner/admin experience differently after this merges? Not "changed line 47 of MenuSelector" but "newly created menus now appear active in the selector instead of incorrectly showing as disabled."
-
What changed (code perspective): One or two sentences on the approach and the key decision, not a list of changes. Name the shape of the solution, not the files: "Switched the disabled-state derivation from published to enabled, since published is ClassPass-controlled and shouldn't affect partner-facing status." If a structural decision deserves a reviewer's attention (a new pattern, a tricky trade-off), say it in a sentence. Resist the urge to inventory the changeset; the reviewer reads the diff for that.
-
Testing: What you did to convince yourself it works, the kind of verification, not a scoreboard. "Created a new menu in the dashboard and confirmed it shows as active and selectable; checked that an existing ClassPass-disabled menu still greys out. Added tests covering the enabled-vs-published split." Name the behaviors you exercised and any manual/browser check. Do not include test counts, coverage percentages, or "N tests passing": those numbers rot on the next commit, nobody reads them, and CI already reports them.
-
Checklist items: Check off what applies, leave unchecked what doesn't. Don't delete template items (reviewers use them as a reference).
Step 5: Push and create the PR
git push -u origin HEAD
gh pr create --title "<title>" --body "$(cat <<'EOF'
<filled template>
EOF
)"
If the branch already has a remote and a PR exists, update it instead:
gh pr edit <number> --body "$(cat <<'EOF'
<filled template>
EOF
)"
Step 6: Report back
Show the user the PR URL and a brief summary of what was submitted. Don't reprint the entire body.
Writing style for PR descriptions
These principles make the difference between a PR that gets reviewed in 5 minutes and one that sits for days:
- Contextualize, don't enumerate. "Fixed the disabled state logic" beats "Changed line 47, renamed variable on line 83, updated PropTypes on line 131."
- Explain decisions. If you chose approach A over approach B, say why in one sentence. Reviewers wonder about alternatives.
- Link, don't repeat. If the ticket has a detailed root cause analysis, link to it. Don't copy-paste the entire ticket into the PR.
- Testing should build confidence, not keep score. Say what behavior you verified and how, the edge cases you exercised, the manual/browser steps, the before/after. Skip test counts, coverage %, and "N passing" entirely: they're churn that's stale by the next push and the reader doesn't care; CI is the source of truth for the numbers.
- Short paragraphs. Walls of text don't get read. 2-3 sentences per section is ideal.
A before/after, since the example is what the model imitates:
❌ Enumerated, stale, contextless:
"Updated MenuSelector.tsx. Changed line 47 disabled logic. Renamed pub to enabled on line 83. Updated PropTypes. Ran 398 tests, all passing. Added 4 tests. Coverage 91% → 92%."
✅ Context-first prose:
"Newly created menus were showing as disabled in the selector even though they were active. The selector was deriving its disabled state from published, which ClassPass controls, so a partner's brand-new menu looked unusable until ClassPass flipped a flag. This switches the derivation to enabled, the partner-facing field, so a menu is selectable the moment it's created. Verified by creating a menu and confirming it's immediately selectable, and that a genuinely unpublished one still greys out."
The bad version lists what moved; the good version explains what was wrong, why, what changed, and how it was checked, and it won't rot, because there's not a single coordinate or count in it.
Anti-patterns
- Don't skip the template. Even if it feels overkill for a one-line fix, fill it in. Consistency matters more than brevity.
- Don't enumerate where you should narrate. A description made of five-bullet lists has flattened all the causality out of your change. If the bullets depend on each other, write the paragraph.
- Don't imitate an enumerated house style. Reading recent merged PRs (Step 2) is for the skeleton (section names, title format, ticket-linking), never for level of detail. If the team's PRs are file-by-file
## Changes dumps, you still write context-first prose inside their section headings. Copying their enumeration is the single most common way this skill fails.
- Don't reference line numbers or file coordinates ("changed line 47"). They go stale on the next push and the diff already shows them. Anchor to behavior.
- Don't include churn-y numbers that rot and that nobody reads: test counts ("398 tests passing"), coverage percentages, "N tests added", file-change counts. CI reports the numbers; the PR body is for context. Say what you verified, never how many.
- Don't list every changed file. That's what the diff is for.
- Don't write "various improvements" or "code cleanup." Be specific about what and why.
- Don't ignore the repo's lived style. Skipping the recent-merged-PR check in Step 2 is how PRs end up not matching house conventions.
- Don't create the PR without pushing first. Check
git status for uncommitted work.
- Don't guess the base branch. Detect it from the repo's default (
main, master, develop).
Flow position
[implementation complete]
|
v
/flagrare:wrap-up <- quality gate
|
v
/flagrare:open-pr <- THIS SKILL
|
v
[reviewer picks it up]
