[ethangardner]

Summary

Added an AI disclosure section and an author's checklist to the pull request template so contributors report AI tool usage and confirm key quality checks before requesting review.

Breaking change

This is not a breaking change.

Problem statement

The pull request template did not ask contributors to disclose whether AI tools were used to create a change, and had no standard checklist confirming that the author validated their own work (tested locally, understands the code, verified accessibility, etc.). Without this, reviewers had no consistent signal about how a PR was produced or whether basic authorship checks had been completed, making review slower and less consistent across contributions.

Solution

Added an "AI disclosure" section with checkboxes for No AI, Chat, Completions (e.g. Copilot), and Coding Agent, so contributors can indicate what AI assistance, if any, was used. Added an "Author's checklist" section covering scope discipline, local verification, passing automated tests, manual accessibility testing with assistive technology, and the author's own understanding of the code. Both sections were inserted between the existing "Major changes" and "Testing and review" sections to keep the template's narrative flow (context → solution → self-verification → reviewer testing instructions) intact.

Major changes

• Added "AI disclosure" section with a checklist of AI tool categories
• Added "Author's checklist" section with pre-review self-verification items

Testing and review

This is a documentation-only change to .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md. To verify, open a new pull request against this branch on GitHub and confirm the template renders correctly, the new checkboxes are interactive, and the section ordering reads sensibly alongside the existing template content.

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[chandracarney]

Thank you, looks good! This is a great step to bringing USWDS in line with other GSA repositories, and the work from the open source governance team.