incident-communication-template

name	incident-communication-template
enabled	true
description	Use when performing incident communication template — template for structured incident communications across all stages of an incident lifecycle. Covers initial notification, status updates, resolution announcement, and post-incident summary with audience-specific messaging for internal teams, leadership, customers, and public status pages.
required_connections	[{"prefix":"slack","label":"Slack (or messaging tool)"},{"prefix":"pagerduty","label":"PagerDuty (or alerting tool)"}]
config_fields	[{"key":"incident_id","label":"Incident ID","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., INC-2026-0342"},{"key":"severity","label":"Severity Level","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., SEV1, SEV2, SEV3"},{"key":"affected_service","label":"Affected Service","required":true,"placeholder":"e.g., payment-processing"}]
features	["COMPLIANCE","INCIDENT_RESPONSE"]

Incident Communication Template Skill

Manage communications for {{ incident_id }} ({{ severity }}) affecting {{ affected_service }}.

Workflow

Phase 1 — Initial Notification

INCIDENT DECLARATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Incident ID: {{ incident_id }}
[ ] Severity: {{ severity }}
[ ] Affected service: {{ affected_service }}
[ ] Detected at: ___
[ ] Declared at: ___
[ ] Incident Commander: ___
[ ] Communications Lead: ___

INITIAL NOTIFICATION — INTERNAL
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Subject: [{{ severity }}] {{ incident_id }} — {{ affected_service }} impacted

We are investigating an issue affecting {{ affected_service }}.

- Impact: [describe user-facing impact]
- Start time: [when issue was first detected]
- Status: Investigating
- Incident Commander: [name]
- War room: [link to channel/bridge]

Next update in [30/60] minutes.

[ ] Sent to: #incidents channel — timestamp: ___
[ ] Sent to: engineering leadership — timestamp: ___

Phase 2 — Status Updates

STATUS UPDATE TEMPLATE — INTERNAL
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Subject: [{{ severity }}] {{ incident_id }} — Update #___

Current status: [Investigating / Identified / Monitoring / Resolved]

Summary:
- [What we know now]
- [What has changed since last update]

Impact:
- Users affected: ___
- Error rate: ___%
- Duration so far: ___

Actions taken:
- [Action 1]
- [Action 2]

Next steps:
- [What we are doing next]

Next update in [30/60] minutes.

UPDATE LOG
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Time    | Update # | Status       | Channel    | Sent By
________|__________|______________|____________|________
        | 1        | Investigating| Internal   |
        | 2        |              |            |
        | 3        |              |            |

Phase 3 — Customer-Facing Communication

CUSTOMER NOTIFICATION — STATUS PAGE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Title: {{ affected_service }} — Service Disruption

[Investigating]
We are currently investigating reports of [impact description].
Some users may experience [specific symptoms].
We will provide updates as we learn more.
Posted: ___

[Identified]
We have identified the cause of the {{ affected_service }} disruption.
Our team is implementing a fix.
Posted: ___

[Monitoring]
A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.
Service is recovering and most users should see improvement.
Posted: ___

[Resolved]
This incident has been resolved.
{{ affected_service }} is operating normally.
Duration: ___
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Posted: ___

COMMUNICATION DECISION MATRIX
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Severity | Status Page | Customer Email | Social Media | Press
SEV1     | YES         | YES            | CONSIDER     | CONSIDER
SEV2     | YES         | TARGETED       | NO           | NO
SEV3     | OPTIONAL    | NO             | NO           | NO

Phase 4 — Leadership Briefing

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Incident: {{ incident_id }} ({{ severity }})
Service: {{ affected_service }}
Duration: ___
Customer impact: ___
Revenue impact: $___

Root cause: [one sentence summary]
Resolution: [one sentence summary]
Preventive measures: [one sentence summary]

[ ] Sent to leadership: [ ] YES — timestamp: ___

Phase 5 — Resolution Announcement

RESOLUTION — INTERNAL
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Subject: [RESOLVED] {{ incident_id }} — {{ affected_service }}

{{ incident_id }} has been resolved.

Timeline:
- Detected: ___
- Declared: ___
- Root cause identified: ___
- Fix deployed: ___
- Resolved: ___
- Total duration: ___

Root cause: [brief description]
Fix applied: [brief description]

Impact:
- Users affected: ___
- Requests failed: ___
- Revenue impact: $___

Next steps:
- Post-incident review scheduled: ___
- Action items will be tracked in: [ticket/doc link]

Phase 6 — Post-Incident Summary

POST-INCIDENT COMMUNICATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Post-incident review completed: ___
[ ] Customer-facing post-mortem published (if required):
    [ ] What happened
    [ ] Impact
    [ ] Root cause
    [ ] What we are doing to prevent recurrence
[ ] Internal post-mortem shared
[ ] Action items assigned and tracked:
    - ___: owner: ___ due: ___
    - ___: owner: ___ due: ___
[ ] Communication retrospective:
    - Updates were timely: [ ] YES  [ ] NO
    - Messaging was accurate: [ ] YES  [ ] NO
    - All audiences reached: [ ] YES  [ ] NO
    - Improvements for next time: ___

Counter-Rationalizations

Shortcut	Counter	Why
"We can skip some steps for this case"	Adapt the workflow steps, don't skip them	Skipped steps are where incidents and oversights originate
"The user seems to already know what to do"	Complete all workflow phases with the user	The workflow catches blind spots that experience alone misses
"This is a minor case, full process is overkill"	Scale the process down, don't turn it off	Minor cases become major when unstructured; the process scales, not disappears
"I'll fill in the details later"	Complete each section before moving on	Deferred details are forgotten; real-time capture is more accurate
"The template output isn't necessary"	Always produce the structured output format	Structured output enables comparison, audit trails, and handoff to other teams

Output Format

Produce an incident communication package with:

1. Communication timeline (all messages sent with timestamps)
2. Audience-specific messages (internal, customer, leadership)
3. Status page updates (chronological entries)
4. Resolution announcement (root cause, fix, prevention)
5. Communication retrospective (what worked, what to improve)