diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 2877ab83d90..75615278282 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -165,6 +165,16 @@ Follow these steps to start contributing:
    $ make quality
    ```
 
+   If you're modifying documents under `docs/source`, make sure to validate that
+   they can still be built. This check also runs in CI. To run a local check
+   make sure you have installed the documentation builder requirements, by
+   running `pip install .[tf,torch,docs]` once from the root of this repository
+   and then run:
+
+   ```bash
+   $ make docs
+   ```
+
    Once you're happy with your changes, add changed files using `git add` and
    make a commit with `git commit` to record your changes locally:
 
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 587c89a2432..62215da63e4 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.PHONY: quality style test test-examples
+.PHONY: quality style test test-examples docs
 
 # Check that source code meets quality standards
 
@@ -23,3 +23,8 @@ test:
 
 test-examples:
 	python -m pytest -n auto --dist=loadfile -s -v ./examples/
+
+# Check that docs can build
+
+docs:
+	cd docs && make html SPHINXOPTS="-W"