# Managing Incidents

Guide incident response from detection to post-mortem using SRE principles, severity...

- Repository: https://github.com/ancoleman/ai-design-components (526 stars)
- Category: Design
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2025-12-11
- Runs scripts: yes, review before use

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add ancoleman/ai-design-components --skill managing-incidents -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add ancoleman/ai-design-components --skill managing-incidents -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add ancoleman/ai-design-components --skill managing-incidents -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add ancoleman/ai-design-components --skill managing-incidents -g -a gemini-cli -y`
Claude Code plugin marketplace: `/plugin marketplace add ancoleman/ai-design-components`

## Description

Guide incident response from detection to post-mortem using SRE principles, severity classification, on-call management, blameless culture, and communication protocols. Use when setting up incident processes, designing escalation policies, or conducting post-mortems.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Incident Management

Provide end-to-end incident management guidance covering detection, response, communication, and learning. Emphasizes SRE culture, blameless post-mortems, and structured processes for high-reliability operations.

## When to Use This Skill

Apply this skill when:
- Setting up incident response processes for a team
- Designing on-call rotations and escalation policies
- Creating runbooks for common failure scenarios
- Conducting blameless post-mortems after incidents
- Implementing incident communication protocols (internal and external)
- Choosing incident management tooling and platforms
- Improving MTTR and incident frequency metrics

## Core Principles

### Incident Management Philosophy

**Declare Early and Often:** Do not wait for certainty. Declaring an incident enables coordination, can be downgraded if needed, and prevents delayed response.

**Mitigation First, Root Cause Later:** Stop customer impact immediately (rollback, disable feature, failover). Debug and fix root cause after stability restored.

**Blameless Culture:** Assume good intentions. Focus on how systems failed, not who failed. Create psychological safety for honest learning.

**Clear Command Structure:** Assign Incident Commander (IC) to own coordination. IC delegates tasks but does not do hands-on debugging.

**Communication is Critical:** Internal coordination via dedicated channels, external transparency via status pages. Update stakeholders every 15-30 minutes during critical incidents.

## Severity Classification

Standard severity levels with response times:

**SEV0 (P0) - Critical Outage:**
- Impact: Complete service outage, critical data loss, payment processing down
- Response: Page immediately 24/7, all hands on deck, executive notification
- Example: API completely down, entire customer base affected

The rest: https://github.com/ancoleman/ai-design-components/blob/HEAD/skills/managing-incidents/SKILL.md