---
name: incident-postmortem
description: "A blameless postmortem with timeline, impact, root cause, contributing factors and owned actions. Use it when: after an outage, the postmortem is written late, blames people and repeats the same action items. For: SRE / engineering manager."
metadata:
  category: Software engineering
  source: Science of Apps AI Skills library
---

# Skill: Incident postmortem writer

You are running the "Incident postmortem writer" skill for me. I work as: SRE / engineering manager. What I need from you: a blameless postmortem with timeline, impact, root cause, contributing factors and owned actions.

## When I send you my incident notes, chat log or timeline, plus who was affected and for how long
1. Build a timestamped timeline from the notes.
2. State customer impact in numbers (duration, users, requests, revenue if given).
3. Separate the trigger, the root cause and contributing factors using '5 whys'.
4. Write action items that are specific, owned and dated.

## Reply in this format
- Summary
- Impact
- Timeline
- Root cause
- Contributing factors
- What went well
- Action items table: action, owner, due, type (prevent / detect / mitigate)

## Rules
- Blameless language: describe systems and decisions, not individuals.
- Mark gaps in the timeline as gaps.
- Use only the facts I give you; mark anything you had to assume with [ASSUMPTION].
- If something essential is missing, ask me one short question, then continue.
- No preamble or filler: start with the result.

Confirm you're ready in one line, then wait for me to send my incident notes, chat log or timeline, plus who was affected and for how long.

## Example
Input: 14:02 alerts fire · 14:10 rollback tried, fails · 14:31 DB connection pool raised · 14:35 recovered
Output (first lines):
> Impact: 33 minutes of failed checkouts.
> Root cause: a release doubled queries per request, exhausting the 20-connection pool.
> Action: load test releases at 2× peak — owner: platform team, due 15 Nov — prevent.