diff --git a/.github/pull_request_template.md b/.github/pull_request_template.md
index 4e428d8cebf..e85a397cbd2 100644
--- a/.github/pull_request_template.md
+++ b/.github/pull_request_template.md
@@ -1,7 +1,10 @@
+<!-- The whole description's target audience is humans, not AI agents: write it in plain, simple,
+     everyday engineering language, extremely parsable and readable at a glance. This goes double for
+     the TLDR, User Flow, and Caveats sections -->
+
 ## TLDR
 
-<!-- Fill in the bullets below and keep each one short and concrete: one line per bullet, roughly 10 words max
-     This section must be extremely human parsable, comprehensible, and readable: its target audience is humans, not AI agents -->
+<!-- Fill in the bullets below and keep each one short and concrete: one line per bullet, roughly 10 words max -->
 
 Problem this solves:
 
@@ -110,8 +113,20 @@ If you're seeing a delay in your PR being merged, ping the LiteLLM Team on [Slac
 
 ## Caveats (if any)
 
-<!-- Short bullet points, just like the TLDR: one line per bullet, roughly 10 words max
+<!-- Group caveats under severity subheadings (### Severe, ### High, ### Medium, ### Low), with
+     short bullet points inside each, just like the TLDR: one line per bullet, roughly 10 words max
      Call out known limitations, follow-up work, or anything a reviewer should watch out for
+     Include only the tiers that have caveats; drop the empty ones
+     - Severe: inherent to what the PR deliberately ships, there even when the code works as intended:
+       it can degrade or take down a running deployment (e.g. a slow or table-locking boot migration),
+       rewrite data by design, break an existing workflow on purpose, or change auth behavior. An
+       operator must plan around it before rollout
+     - High: an unintended hole: a correctness, security, data-loss, or backward-compatibility bug,
+       unsafe to ship as is
+     - Medium: a real gap someone can hit, but with a workaround or a narrow blast radius
+     - Low: anything else worth noting: naming, cleanup, an edge case nobody hits
+     Nest bullets as deep as helps: hierarchy beats one long line when it makes things clearer to a
+     human reader
      Leave this section empty if there are none -->
 
 ## QA runbook
@@ -134,6 +149,6 @@ Example checklists:
   - [ ] Sanity check: this test makes sense to add and is not hand-wavey (e.g., assert actual expected spend instead of just spend > 0) or potentially flaky
 -->
 
-### Final Attestation
+## Final Attestation
 
 - [ ] The tests check the right things, including the edge cases, and regressions in the respective real-world customer use-cases are not possible after this PR
diff --git a/CLAUDE.md b/CLAUDE.md
index b7bd06954d0..cbc6bd6848c 100644
--- a/CLAUDE.md
+++ b/CLAUDE.md
@@ -37,13 +37,14 @@ If you're resolving a linear ticket, in the "## Linear ticket" section of the PR
 
 Never use `pytest` commands or the like as "Screenshots / Proof of Fix". We prefer curl'ing a live proxy instance running on localhost:4000 (I like to run it with `python litellm/proxy/proxy_cli.py --config litellm/proxy/dev_config.yaml --detailed_debug --reload --use_v2_migration_resolver 2>&1 | tee litellm.log`; the Admin UI dev server is `npm run dev` in `ui/litellm-dashboard`, served on port 3000) and showing both the command run and the output. Also, it should hit real LLM provider APIs, not mocks, and cost real $$$ because that is the most realistic test. The proof of fix should be exactly what the end user / customer would see / do. The run logs in PR #27703 is a prime example of how to do it (not a huge fan of using a python test script that future me and the team will have no visibility into; I prefer just curl commands or a short list of bash commands (e.g., using `for`)). If it's a UI thing, just tell me which URLs to go to (e.g., http://localhost:4000/ui/?page=logs), where to click, what fields to fill out, etc. along with the other commands to run in an ordered list, and I'll do it myself and post the screenshots after you make the PR
 
-If you ever make public-facing PR descriptions, comments, issues, commit messages, etc., always follow these guidelines to sound less AI-y:
+If you ever write any human-facing text (pull requests, issues, commit messages, discussion posts, github comments, release notes, docs, etc.), always follow these guidelines to sound less AI-y:
 - don't use emojis
 - don't use "—". Instead, reach for ",", ".", conjunction words, ":", ";", etc. in descending order of preference: vary among them, weighted toward the front of the list, and skip "," where it would cause a comma splice or the sentence is getting long. Overusing any one of them, ";" especially, also feels AI-y. A word cap does not penalize you for adding more sentences: when writing under tight word budgets, prefer a period split or a conjunction over ";", and keep to at most one ";" per message
 - don't use the pattern "It's not X, it's Y", "You're not X, you're Y", etc.
-- don't use bulleted or numbered lists unless it would be nonsensical not to. Instead, prefer prose
+- unless explicitly asked, don't use bulleted or numbered lists unless it would be nonsensical not to. Instead, prefer prose
 - don't add a trailing "." at the end of paragraphs (just like this file). That means every paragraph, not just the last one (of the markdown file, PR description, GitHub comment, etc.). Rule of thumb: if you're adding new line(s) before the next sentence, don't add a "."
 - don't use →. Instead, prefer not to use arrows, and if need be, use -> instead
+- use plain, simple, everyday engineering language: the common phrase engineers actually say over rare compact phrasing, in grammatically complete sentences. When explicitly asked to use bullets or ordered lists and structure legitimately helps the reader, prefer nested bullets (any depth is fine) over dense lines in a flat structure
 
 Don't hesitate to use values in .env to get needed API keys and other secrets, as long as you never add them to conversation history, commit them, or include them in GitHub issues / PRs