incident-postmortem-template_skill

Overview

This skill automates creation, validation, and management of incident postmortem templates for technical documentation teams. It provides step-by-step guidance, generates production-ready templates and configurations, and enforces common postmortem standards. Use it to standardize investigations, speed documentation, and improve learning from incidents.

How this skill works

The skill inspects trigger phrases like "incident postmortem template" and activates guidance flows tailored to your incident type and audience. It generates templated sections (summary, timeline, impact, root cause, remediation, follow-up), validates required fields, and outputs ready-to-use Markdown or structured JSON. It can also suggest remediation tasks and review checklists to ensure completeness.

When to use it

• Preparing a postmortem after a service outage or degraded incident
• Standardizing postmortem format across teams or projects
• Onboarding writers or engineers to postmortem best practices
• Automating generation of postmortem drafts from incident data
• Validating completeness before publishing a postmortem

Best practices

• Include concise executive summary and clear impact metrics up front
• Record an accurate timeline with timestamps and evidence sources
• State root cause and contributing factors separately and clearly
• List actionable remediation with owners and deadlines for follow-up
• Use a consistent template and validation checklist before publishing

Example use cases

• Generate a first-draft postmortem from an incident ticket or timeline
• Enforce required fields and checklist validation before sign-off
• Create a template variant for customer-facing vs internal reports
• Produce remediation task list and export to tracking tools
• Train new engineers on effective postmortem structure and content