diff --git a/doc/contributing/collaborator-guide.md b/doc/contributing/collaborator-guide.md
index 43adfbb8a272ba..4eea65e8c061f4 100644
--- a/doc/contributing/collaborator-guide.md
+++ b/doc/contributing/collaborator-guide.md
@@ -127,6 +127,11 @@ for the change.
 
 Approval must be from collaborators who are not authors of the change.
 
+Ideally pull requests for dependencies should be generated by automation.
+Pay special attention to pull requests for dependencies which have not
+been automatically generated and follow the guidance in
+[Maintaining Dependencies](https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/main/doc/contributing/maintaining/maintaining-dependencies.md#updating-dependencies).
+
 In some cases, it might be necessary to summon a GitHub team to a pull request
 for review by @-mention.
 See [Who to CC in the issue tracker](#who-to-cc-in-the-issue-tracker).
diff --git a/doc/contributing/maintaining/maintaining-dependencies.md b/doc/contributing/maintaining/maintaining-dependencies.md
index e21a6409b3c896..d1bfc7dcaf6755 100644
--- a/doc/contributing/maintaining/maintaining-dependencies.md
+++ b/doc/contributing/maintaining/maintaining-dependencies.md
@@ -144,6 +144,17 @@ the corresponding script in `tools/update-deps`.
 [npm-cli-bot](https://github.com/npm/cli/blob/latest/.github/workflows/create-node-pr.yml)
 takes care of npm update, it is maintained by the npm team.
 
+PRs for manual dependency updates should only be accepted if
+the update cannot be generated by the automated tooling,
+the reason is clearly documented and either the PR is
+reviewed in detail or it is from an existing collaborator.
+
+In general updates to dependencies should only be accepted
+if they have already landed in the upstream. The TSC may
+grant an exception on a case-by-case basis. This avoids
+the project having to float patches for a long time and
+ensures that tooling can generate updates automatically.
+
 ## Dependency list
 
 ### acorn