Create Runbook

Overview

Generate an operational runbook with step-by-step procedures, copy-pasteable commands, troubleshooting decision trees, and clear escalation paths. Runbooks are designed to be followed under pressure by an on-call engineer who may not be familiar with the system, so every step must be explicit, every command must be runnable, and every decision point must have clear criteria.

Workflow

1. Read architecture context — Scan .chalk/docs/engineering/ for:

   • Architecture docs (service names, endpoints, infrastructure components)
   • Previous runbooks (to match format and avoid duplication)
   • Incident reports and postmortems (to identify procedures that should exist but do not)
   • Monitoring and alerting docs (dashboard links, alert names) Also check .chalk/docs/ root for any configuration or infrastructure documentation.

2. Parse the runbook scope — From $ARGUMENTS, identify:

   • Which service or process the runbook covers
   • What scenario it addresses (deployment, rollback, scaling, failover, data recovery, etc.)
   • Whether this is a routine procedure or an emergency procedure