diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 221c4654..3c67ff9c 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 # SingleStore Spaces Contributing Guide
 
+First, please fork this repo and commit your changes to forked repo. From there make a Pull Request with your notebook submission keeping the following in mind:
+
+
 ## File structure
 
 To add a new space you should create a new folder inside `/notebooks`.
@@ -26,3 +29,18 @@ title="Atlas & Kai for Mongo Side-by-Side"
 description="Compare performance on same code from simple to more complex queries"
 tags=["mongodb", "kai"]
 ```
+
+
+## Pre-commit checks on the clone of this repo
+
+The CI pipeline in this repo runs a bunch of validation checks and code reformatting with pre-commit checks. If you don't install those checks in your clone of the repo, the code will likely never pass. To install the pre-commit tool in your clone run the following from your clone directory. This will force the checks before you can push.
+
+```bash
+pip3 install pre-commit
+pre-commit install
+```
+
+The checks run automatically when you attempt to commit, but you can run them manually as well with the following:
+```bash
+pre-commit run --all-files
+```