> On that commit, we'd require a very brief bullet list of changes, sometimes a POC, and a link to the PR.

one of the first things i do in a new gitlab repo is set up ff+squash commit merges with the squash commit message template automatically pulling the MR title, link, description, authors etc.

    %{title} 

    -
    ref: %{reference}
    url: %{url}
    authored by: %{merge_request_author}
    merged by: %{merged_by}
    -
    %{description}