Use when analyzing failures, outages, incidents, or negative outcomes, conducting blameless postmortems, documenting root causes with 5 Whys or fishbone diagrams, identifying corrective actions with owners and timelines, learning from near-misses, establishing prevention strategies, or when user mentions postmortem, incident review, failure analysis, RCA, lessons learned, or after-action review.
SkillScore91Maintained
Automatic
◆DevOps & SRE pack
Last verified 8/24/2026
What it changes
Passed 20 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 19 of 22 without it.
Without skill86%
With skill91%
Checks it passed that the model alone missed
Includes an explicit completion deadline.
Assigns the corrective action to a single named individual owner.
Advises keeping the postmortem open until all associated action items are completed.
2 fixed18 passed either way1 still failing1 broke
Pass-rate lift
+5 pp
Tokens
+167%
Agent turns
0%
Response time
-14%
Model gemini-3.6-flashMeasured 8/24/2026v120 of 22 cases passed with skill
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
See it in action
One of 2 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
1 of 2
Prompt
The postmortem document for the email gateway failure has been written and signed off by the team lead. However, 3 high-priority engineering action items remain in progress in Jira. Should the postmortem issue itself be closed now? Explain.
What was checked, without and with the skill
Checked
Without skill
With skill
Advises keeping the postmortem open until all associated action items are completed.
Missed
Passed
case-16 · gemini-3.6-flash · 8/24/2026 · answers are capped and redacted
What's inside
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
Conduct blameless postmortems that transform failures into learning opportunities by documenting what happened, why it happened, impact quantification, root cause analysis, and actionable preventions with clear ownership.
When to Use
Use this skill when:
Incident Context
Production outage, system failure, or service degradation occurred
Security breach, data loss, or compliance violation happened
Product launch failed, project missed deadline, or initiative underperformed
Customer-impacting bug, quality issue, or support crisis arose
Near-miss incident that could have caused serious harm (proactive postmortem)
Learning Goals
Need to understand root cause (not just symptoms) to prevent recurrence
Want to identify systemic issues vs. individual mistakes
Must document timeline and impact for stakeholders or auditors
Aim to improve processes, systems, or practices based on failure insights
Building organizational learning culture (celebrate transparency, not blame)
Timing
Immediately after incident resolution (while memory fresh, within 48 hours)
Scheduled reviews for recurring issues or chronic problems
Quarterly reviews of all incidents to identify patterns
Pre-mortem style: Before major launch, imagine it failed and write postmortem