L09 Issue Templates

title: "Issue Templates for Open Source Projects" weight: 9 description: "Learn issue templates for open source: bug report format, feature request format, question templates, and using GitHub issue forms to collect structured information from contributors." date: 2026-06-28 lastmod: 2026-06-28 tags: [technical-writing, open-source] }

Issue templates guide contributors to provide necessary information when creating issues, reducing back-and-forth and ensuring maintainers have the context they need to respond.

In this lesson, you will learn how to create effective issue templates for bug reports, feature requests, and questions.

What You'll Learn

You will learn issue template formats, GitHub issue forms, template configuration, and best practices for collecting structured information.

Why It Matters

Good issue templates save maintainers hours of back-and-forth. They ensure every issue has reproduction steps, environment details, and expected behavior.

name: Bug Report
description: Report a bug to help us improve
body:
  - type: textarea
    id: description
    attributes:
      label: Bug Description
      description: What happened?
    validations:
      required: true

Teacher Mindset

Think of issue templates as forms that make it easy for contributors to help you help them. The template guides them to provide exactly what you need.

Common Mistakes

1. Asking for Too Much

Long forms discourage issue creation. Ask for essentials only.

2. No Reproduction Steps Template

Bugs without reproduction steps are hard to diagnose.

3. Not Using Issue Forms

Regular issue templates are Markdown text. GitHub issue forms provide structured input.

Practice Questions

1. What should a bug report template include? Description, reproduction steps, expected behavior, actual behavior, environment, and screenshots.

2. How do issue forms differ from Markdown templates? Issue forms provide structured input fields, validation, and conditional logic.

3. Challenge: Create a bug report template and a feature request template for a project.

FAQ

Mini Project

Create or improve issue templates for a project. Include a bug report template with reproduction steps and a feature request template with use cases.

What's Next

PR Templates in the next lesson.