| name | error-budget-management |
| description | Advises on SLOs, error budget burn, and release trade-offs such as feature freezes or reliability sprints. Use when balancing velocity against reliability targets. |
Error budget management
Purpose
Connect product delivery decisions to SLOs and error budgets with numeric burn, remaining budget, and explicit trade-offs—not generic "be more reliable" advice.
When to Use
- User asks about error budget, SLO burn, release freeze, or reliability vs features.
- Post-incident policy on shipping during elevated risk.
- Planning sprint focus when observability data shows fast burn.
When NOT to Use
- Raw dashboard queries → grafana, datadog, cloudwatch.
- Writing the postmortem → postmortem-authoring.
- Defining SLO implementations from scratch → monitor-slos.
Expected Outcome
- Short recommendation with SLO, burn rate, budget remaining, and suggested policy (freeze, slow down, or invest).
- Explicit tradeoffs for product and engineering leads.
Inputs to Gather
- SLO definitions and measurement window (30d rolling, etc.).
- Current burn rate and incidents in period.
- Upcoming releases and risk profile.
- Organizational policy on exhausted budgets.
Workflow
- Pull SLO/error budget signals from user or observability tools.
- State SLO target, current SLI, and budget consumed/remaining.
- Compare burn to policy thresholds.
- Recommend freeze, reduced risk releases, reliability sprint, or safe feature investment.
- Document assumptions if data is incomplete.
Domain guidance
Tie product pace to reliability objectives.
- State SLO and current burn; compare to budget remaining.
- If budget is exhausted or burning fast: recommend feature freeze, reduced risk releases, or reliability sprint.
- If budget is healthy: note where to safely re-invest (debt, features).
Output: short recommendation with numbers and explicit tradeoffs.
Tool Availability Rules
| Access | Behavior |
|---|
| Full tool access | Use metrics/SLO tools for live burn calculations. |
| Read-only | Compute from user-supplied numbers; show formula. |
| No data | Ask for SLO, SLI, and window; do not invent burn rates. |
Related tool sets
Review / Decision / Execution Criteria
- Numbers must be sourced or labeled as estimates.
- Recommendations proportional to burn severity.
- Align with blameless culture—policy, not blame.
Output Format
- SLO/SLI snapshot.
- Budget status (remaining %, burn rate).
- Recommendation (ship / slow / freeze / invest).
- Tradeoffs and assumptions.
Quality Bar
- Exec-readable in under one screen.
- Actionable policy guidance.
Safety and Boundaries
- Do not fabricate SLO metrics.
- Do not mandate production changes without stakeholder alignment.
Escalation / Dispatch Rules
- Metric proof → observability skills.
- Incident narrative → postmortem-authoring.
References
skills/old_skills.json (error-budget-management).skills/skill.instruction.md, skills/meta.instructions.md
