Custom Placeholders

The Problem

Generic PR templates try to work for everyone—frontend teams, backend teams, security teams, QA teams—and end up being noise for most.

• Security teams need threat assessment sections
• QA teams need testing checklists
• DevOps teams need deployment impact notes
• Product teams need user-facing change summaries

A one-size-fits-all template actually fits no one well.

The Solution

Define your own template placeholders that get substituted at runtime. Create team-specific workflows without modifying the codebase.

Usage

Pass custom placeholders as JSON in your workflow:

- uses: elvis-ndubuisi/lazypr@v1
  with:
    github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    api_key: ${{ secrets.OPENAI_API_KEY }}
    custom_placeholders: |
      {
        "{{securityReview}}": "Authentication layer changes - internal endpoints only",
        "{{threatLevel}}": "Low",
        "{{testCoverage}}": "Unit tests added for new auth logic",
        "{{rollbackPlan}}": "Revert to previous JWT implementation"
      }

Template Example

Create a security-focused template in your repo:

## Security Review

**Threat Level:** {{threatLevel}}
**Scope:** {{securityReview}}

**Testing:** {{testCoverage}}
**Rollback Plan:** {{rollbackPlan}}

### Changes
{{diff}}

lazyPR substitutes the placeholders with your values before sending to the AI.

Common Use Cases

Security-Focused PRs

{
  "{{threatLevel}}": "Medium - new API endpoints exposed",
  "{{securityReview}}": "Reviewed for OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities",
  "{{complianceNotes}}": "GDPR data handling verified"
}

QA Workflows

{
  "{{testCases}}": "Added: auth flow, edge cases, error handling",
  "{{regressionRisk}}": "Low - isolated to auth module",
  "{{manualTesting}}": "Tested on staging environment"
}

Deployment Tracking

{
  "{{deploymentImpact}}": "Database migration required",
  "{{downtime}}": "Zero-downtime deployment",
  "{{monitoring}}": "Alert on auth failure rate"
}

Key Benefits

• Team-specific - Each team defines what matters to them
• Zero code changes - Update placeholders via workflow config
• Flexible - Use any placeholder names you want
• Secure - No template injection vulnerabilities (validated JSON input)

Template Requirements

• Use {{placeholderName}} format in templates
• Define values in custom_placeholders JSON
• Placeholders can appear multiple times in a template
• Undefined placeholders are left as-is (not replaced)

Your workflow, your way. See templates guide for built-in placeholders.