coleam00/second-brain-skills

Overview

This skill creates clear, scannable runbooks, playbooks, and SOPs for engineering and ops teams. It focuses on actionable steps, precise thresholds, and a Definition of Done so teams can execute reliably under pressure. Use it to turn informal processes into maintainable, testable documentation.

How this skill works

Provide the process, context, and audience and the skill selects the appropriate format (runbook, playbook, checklist, troubleshooting guide, etc.). It produces a lightweight document with metadata, a top-line TL;DR, a Definition of Done checklist, numbered action-first steps, verification criteria, common failure modes, and owner/contact info. The output emphasizes specificity, warnings-first, and clear decision points.

When to use it

• Create an incident runbook for on-call responders
• Document a deployment or migration playbook before a release
• Turn tribal knowledge into a repeatable how-to or checklist
• Write a troubleshooting guide or decision tree for debugging
• Produce onboarding or handoff docs for role transitions

Best practices

• Start with a one-sentence TL;DR and a checklist Definition of Done
• Make every step an action with exact tools, commands, names, and thresholds
• Put warnings and irreversible actions up front, before steps
• Choose the format by purpose: runbook for emergencies, playbook for multi-phase work
• Include owner, last_updated, and a review schedule in the metadata

Example use cases

• Emergency database failover runbook with exact rollback steps and verification
• Deployment playbook for a blue/green release including cutover checklist
• Troubleshooting guide for flaky CI with a decision tree and remediation commands
• Onboarding guide for new SREs listing access, run-through tasks, and success criteria
• Standard SOP for weekly backup validation with scheduled checks and notification steps