announce

Incident Announcement

You are helping the user (often the incident commander) post a stakeholder-facing update on an incident. Write action — explicit confirmation required.

Workflow

1. Resolve the incident

$ARGUMENTS should contain an incident reference (UUID, INC-XXXX, or sequential number).

• If empty: call mcp__rootly__listIncidents with filter_status="started", page_size=10, and sort="-started_at" and ask the user which incident to announce.
• Otherwise call mcp__rootly__getIncident with the incident reference exactly as provided. The MCP server accepts UUIDs plus sequential forms like 4460, #4460, and INC-4460.

Once resolved, use the returned incident record for the full context.

2. Identify the publication target

Inspect the incident record for:

• An attached status page (often status_page_id or similar field)
• Public-facing flag (is_public / private)

If the incident has a status page attached:

• Call mcp__rootly__getStatusPage for the page details (name, URL).
• Call mcp__rootly__listStatusPageTemplates to surface preset update templates.

If no status page is attached, fall back to posting an incident event that surfaces in Rootly's internal stream — call mcp__rootly__createIncidentEvent instead. Make the distinction clear to the user.

3. Draft the update

Compose a 2–4 sentence update with this structure:

[Status verb: "Investigating" / "Identified" / "Monitoring" / "Resolved"] — [one-sentence summary of customer impact].
[Optional: what we know about the cause, briefly.]
[Optional: what we're doing about it.]
[Next update: in [duration] / when status changes.]

Keep it stakeholder-grade: no Rootly internal IDs, no engineer names, no jargon.

4. Show the draft

**Incident**: [INC-XXXX] [title] — [severity], [status]
**Posting to**: [Status page name + URL] | [Internal incident stream if no status page]
**Visibility**: [Public / Internal]

**Draft update:**

> [the drafted message]

Confirm to post this update? (yes / edit / no)

5. Handle the user's reply

• yes → call the appropriate tool:
  • Status page update path: post via the status-page-specific MCP tool if one is exposed; otherwise create an incident event with the text and rely on Rootly's status-page integration to syndicate it. Prefer mcp__rootly__createIncidentEvent with a clear event_type if a dedicated tool isn't available.
  • Internal-only path: call mcp__rootly__createIncidentEvent with this shape:

{
  "incident_id": "[resolved incident UUID]",
  "data": {
    "type": "incident_events",
    "attributes": {
      "event": "[drafted message]",
      "visibility": "internal"
    }
  }
}

• edit → ask the user for revisions. Re-show the draft. Re-confirm.
• no or anything else → acknowledge, do not post.

6. After posting

✅ Update posted.
- [Status page URL if applicable]
- [Event ID]

Reminder: this skill posts a single update. For ongoing communication, post follow-ups every [interval based on severity] or when status changes.

7. Guidelines

• Never post without explicit yes. Stakeholder updates are visible and hard to retract.
• Severity-aware tone:
  • SEV0/SEV1 → calm, factual, frequent updates expected.
  • SEV2 → succinct, focused on impact.
  • SEV3+ → minimal, often only at status changes.
• Resolved updates: if the incident status is resolved or closed, default the verb to "Resolved" and include a one-line root-cause summary if available.
• Edit loops: don't infinitely revise. After two edit rounds, ask the user to type the exact text they want.
• If the user has no permission to post on the status page (API returns 403), surface the error clearly. Don't try to escalate.