Improve contribution guidelines and experience (#64296)
# Objective
Both our PR template and contribution guidelines are too convoluted.
This results in:
- contributors missing important information because the information is
buried in the contributing file
- worse commit descriptions post-merge due to the most important
information being buried and or a lot of boilerplate present
- the PR template often being neglected by staff themselves entirely
- more work for reviewers/engineer on triage here since they have to
repeatedly point people at the contribution gudelines
## Solution
In order to take a stab at improving this, this PR goes for the
following:
1. Shrink the PR template
- this aims at reducing the cognitive load looking at this and filling
it out whilst preserving all the important information needed for
reviewers
- a lot of text has been removed to make commit messages in the repo
more readable
- keep text still visible as opposed to having HTML comments so that
reviewers spot this and can raise
## Testing
Tested this by giving it a read myself and iterating with Kirill on the
final wording/sorting/organization of contents and files.
## Self-Review Checklist:
- [-] I've reviewed my own diff for quality, security, and reliability
- [-] Unsafe blocks (if any) have justifying comments
- [-] The content adheres to Zed's UI standards
([UX/UI](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#uiux-checklist)
and
[icon](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/crates/icons/README.md)
guidelines)
- [-] Tests cover the new/changed behavior
- [-] Performance impact has been considered and is acceptable
## Showcase
<details>
<summary>The new contribution guidelines</summary>
<img width="1209" height="1293" alt="grafik"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6a3f5012-7f46-48b7-add2-9f2400f01c57"
/>
</details>
<details>
<summary>The PR template in action</summary>
<img width="879" height="688" alt="grafik"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/87e5ad65-7ade-45b8-b8a8-8818c9a49ba8"
/>
</details>
---
Release Notes:
- N/A
---------
Co-authored-by: zelenenka <241371603+zelenenka@users.noreply.github.com>
e52ab15eacFinn Evers committed on 9/25/2026, 3:42:49 PM· committed by GitHubparent7ea077c