Incident Response
AnthropicOfficialPublished by Anthropic
- Skill
- Workflow
- Software development
- Apache-2.0
- No issues found
AutoGineer summary
Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author
The incident-response skill provides a standardized framework for handling service disruptions. It guides teams through the critical phases of incident management: triage and severity assessment, communication, mitigation tracking, and post-incident analysis. By enforcing a consistent structure for status updates and postmortem reports, it helps teams maintain clarity, accountability, and a blameless culture during high-pressure situations.
What it does
- Assesses incident severity based on predefined impact criteria
- Generates structured status updates for internal and external stakeholders
- Facilitates the creation of blameless postmortem reports
- Guides root cause analysis using the 5 Whys technique
- Tracks incident timelines and mitigation actions
- Supports integration with monitoring, chat, and incident management tools
When to use it
- When a production service experiences downtime or degradation
- When you need to perform a severity assessment on a new alert
- When providing regular status updates during an active incident
- When conducting a post-incident review to identify process improvements
Advantages
- Reduces cognitive load during high-stress incidents
- Ensures consistent communication across all stakeholders
- Promotes a blameless culture focused on system improvements
- Standardizes the documentation of root causes and action items
Usage examples
- “/incident-response new Production API is returning 500 errors for all users.”
- The agent initiates a new incident, assesses the severity as SEV1, and prompts for role assignments and initial mitigation steps.
- “/incident-response update We have identified the database connection pool exhaustion and are restarting the services.”
- The agent generates a formatted status update with the current status, actions taken, and next steps.
- “/incident-response postmortem”
- The agent compiles the collected incident data into a structured postmortem document, including the timeline, 5 Whys analysis, and action items.
Install
Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://mp-staging.autogineer.com/agent-skills/anthropics/incident-response/downloadUnzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:
mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip incident-response.zip -d .agents/skills
Documentation by Anthropic
/incident-response
If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md.
Manage an incident from detection through postmortem.
Usage
/incident-response $ARGUMENTSModes
/incident-response new [description] # Start a new incident
/incident-response update [status] # Post a status update
/incident-response postmortem # Generate postmortem from incident dataIf no mode is specified, ask what phase the incident is in.
How It Works
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ INCIDENT RESPONSE │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Phase 1: TRIAGE │
│ ✓ Assess severity (SEV1-4) │
│ ✓ Identify affected systems and users │
│ ✓ Assign roles (IC, comms, responders) │
│ │
│ Phase 2: COMMUNICATE │
│ ✓ Draft internal status update │
│ ✓ Draft customer communication (if needed) │
│ ✓ Set up war room and cadence │
│ │
│ Phase 3: MITIGATE │
│ ✓ Document mitigation steps taken │
│ ✓ Track timeline of events │
│ ✓ Confirm resolution │
│ │
│ Phase 4: POSTMORTEM │
│ ✓ Blameless postmortem document │
│ ✓ Timeline reconstruction │
│ ✓ Root cause analysis (5 whys) │
│ ✓ Action items with owners │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Severity Classification
| Level | Criteria | Response Time |
|---|---|---|
| SEV1 | Service down, all users affected | Immediate, all-hands |
| SEV2 | Major feature degraded, many users affected | Within 15 min |
| SEV3 | Minor feature issue, some users affected | Within 1 hour |
| SEV4 | Cosmetic or low-impact issue | Next business day |
Communication Guidance
Provide clear, factual updates at regular cadence. Include: what's happening, who's affected, what we're doing, when the next update is.
Output — Status Update
## Incident Update: [Title]
**Severity:** SEV[1-4] | **Status:** Investigating | Identified | Monitoring | Resolved
**Impact:** [Who/what is affected]
**Last Updated:** [Timestamp]
### Current Status
[What we know now]
### Actions Taken
- [Action 1]
- [Action 2]
### Next Steps
- [What's happening next and ETA]
### Timeline
| Time | Event |
|------|-------|
| [HH:MM] | [Event] |Output — Postmortem
## Postmortem: [Incident Title]
**Date:** [Date] | **Duration:** [X hours] | **Severity:** SEV[X]
**Authors:** [Names] | **Status:** Draft
### Summary
[2-3 sentence plain-language summary]
### Impact
- [Users affected]
- [Duration of impact]
- [Business impact if quantifiable]
### Timeline
| Time (UTC) | Event |
|------------|-------|
| [HH:MM] | [Event] |
### Root Cause
[Detailed explanation of what caused the incident]
### 5 Whys
1. Why did [symptom]? → [Because...]
2. Why did [cause 1]? → [Because...]
3. Why did [cause 2]? → [Because...]
4. Why did [cause 3]? → [Because...]
5. Why did [cause 4]? → [Root cause]
### What Went Well
- [Things that worked]
### What Went Poorly
- [Things that didn't work]
### Action Items
| Action | Owner | Priority | Due Date |
|--------|-------|----------|----------|
| [Action] | [Person] | P0/P1/P2 | [Date] |
### Lessons Learned
[Key takeaways for the team]If Connectors Available
If ~~monitoring is connected:
Pull alert details and metrics
Show graphs of affected metrics
If ~~incident management is connected:
Create or update incident in PagerDuty/Opsgenie
Page on-call responders
If ~~chat is connected:
Post status updates to incident channel
Create war room channel
Tips
Start writing immediately — Don't wait for complete information. Update as you learn more.
Keep updates factual — What we know, what we've done, what's next. No speculation.
Postmortems are blameless — Focus on systems and processes, not individuals.
Files
- ATTRIBUTION.mdAdded by AutoGineer912 B
- LICENSELicence file added by AutoGineer11.3 KiB
- SKILL.md5.5 KiB
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Requirements and compatibility
Written for: Claude Code, Claude apps
Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta
“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.
Needs: Claude Code frontmatter
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Attribution and licence
- Published by
- Anthropic
- Publisher
- Anthropic (Official)
- Source
- anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins · engineering/skills/incident-response · commit e050c2e
- Licence
- Apache License 2.0 (redistribution allowed)
- LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
- ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
- Synced
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