On-Call Handoff

On-Call Handoff

Overview

A shift handoff is a state-transfer problem, not a status update. The outgoing responder holds context that only exists in their head — which alert fired three times and turned out to be noise, which open incident is waiting on a vendor callback, which service has been flaky all week even though nothing paged. A good handoff makes that context explicit and durable so the incoming responder starts the shift at full context instead of rebuilding it from scratch, or worse, missing it entirely.

This skill produces that handoff from whatever incident-management tool is actually connected, plus whatever corroborating alert/monitor state is available, rather than from the outgoing responder's memory alone.

Discovering available tools first

This pack is cross-vendor. Never assume which incident-management tool is connected, or what its tools are literally named, before checking:

1. Call conduit__search_tools with a query like "on-call handoff", "list incidents", or "current on-call" to discover which incident-management connector(s) are actually live for this org, and the exact tool names exposed (they follow <vendor-slug>__<tool_name>, e.g. rootly__get_oncall_handoff_summary, rootly__list_incidents, pagerduty__list_incidents, betterstack__list_incidents).
2. If an observability tool (Sentry, Datadog, Grafana) is also connected, a second discovery pass can surface corroborating signal — e.g., an error rate spike that hasn't yet paged but is worth flagging to the incoming responder as "watch this."
3. Only after discovery, call the concrete tools that came back. If discovery returns no incident-management connector at all, say so plainly — there is no pager state to hand off without one.

Never fall back to guessing a tool name speculatively — an unrecognized tool call is a worse failure mode than asking the user which incident-management tool they use.

Key Concepts

What belongs in a handoff

A complete handoff covers four categories, in priority order:

1. Currently paging / unresolved — anything open right now: active incidents, unacknowledged alerts, anything mid-investigation. This is the incoming responder's immediate to-do list, not background reading.
2. Last-shift history and status — incidents that fired and resolved during the outgoing shift, with a one-line outcome each. This isn't for action, it's for context — "we've had three DB connection-pool alerts today" changes how the incoming responder reads the fourth one.
3. Known-flaky alerts to watch — alerts that fired and were dismissed as noise, or that fire repeatedly without a real underlying issue. These don't belong in "currently paging," but silently dropping them from the handoff means the incoming responder re-diagnoses a known non-issue from scratch, or worse, dismisses a real one because "that alert's always noisy."
4. Escalated but not yet actioned — anything that crossed an escalation tier (secondary/manager paged) but doesn't yet have an owner or a next step. This is the highest-risk category to drop silently, because it means someone is already waiting on a response that hasn't happened.

Distinguishing "resolved" from "quiet"

An incident tool showing zero open incidents is not the same as "nothing to hand off." A service that alerted five times and self-recovered each time is quieter on paper than a single ongoing incident, but it's a stronger signal that something needs attention before it becomes a real outage. Don't let an empty open-incidents list stand in for the whole handoff — always check last-shift history even when nothing is currently open.

Known-flaky vs. genuinely resolved

Before labeling an alert "known-flaky," confirm it actually has a pattern — multiple firings with no corroborating incident, ideally across more than one shift. A single alert that fired once and cleared is not yet "known-flaky," it's just resolved; mislabeling it downgrades attention on something that might recur meaningfully. When in doubt, report it under last-shift history rather than the known-flaky category.

Common Workflows

Build a shift handoff

1. Discover the connected incident-management tool via conduit__search_tools (see above).
2. Pull current open/unresolved incidents and their status, severity, and assigned responder (if any).
3. Pull incident history for the outgoing shift window (default: since the last handoff, or the last 12–24 hours if no prior handoff timestamp is available — state which window was used).
4. Identify known-flaky alerts: incidents/alerts in the shift history that were dismissed, auto-resolved, or repeated with no distinct root cause.
5. Identify anything escalated (secondary/manager tier reached) without a currently assigned owner or documented next step.
6. If an observability tool is connected, pull any anomaly that hasn't yet triggered a formal incident but is trending toward one (e.g., a rising error rate or latency SLI) and flag it as a watch item, clearly separated from actual incidents.
7. Assemble the handoff in priority order: currently paging → escalated without owner → last-shift history → known-flaky watch list.

Confirm a handoff before taking the pager

1. Run the build workflow above.
2. Read back the "currently paging" and "escalated without owner" sections explicitly to the incoming responder before considering the handoff complete — these are the two categories where a miss has immediate consequences.

Error Handling

No incident-management connector discovered

Say so explicitly: "No incident-management connector is available through the gateway, so there's no pager state to hand off." Do not fabricate incidents or invent an empty-shift summary.

Incident tool connected but no explicit handoff-summary tool

Some vendors expose a purpose-built handoff tool (e.g. rootly__get_oncall_handoff_summary); others don't. If none is available, assemble the handoff manually from list-incidents plus current-on-call tools rather than skipping the handoff.

Observability tool not connected

Proceed with the incident-management-only handoff and note explicitly that no corroborating observability signal was available for the watch-list section, rather than omitting the section or fabricating a "no anomalies" result.

Multiple incident-management tools connected

Ask which schedule/service scope to hand off rather than silently merging or picking one.

Best Practices

• Always discover tools before calling them — never hardcode a vendor's tool name.
• Lead with what requires immediate action (currently paging, escalated without owner) before background context (history, known-flaky).
• Treat missing data (no observability connector, no formal handoff tool) as a stated gap, not a reason to skip the section silently.
• Don't let a quiet current-incident list stand in for a full handoff — always check shift history too.

Related Skills

• Incident Postmortem — deeper reconstruction once an incident from the handoff needs a full retrospective
• Error Budget Tracking — the service-health trend context that complements a handoff's incident-specific view