postmortem-writing
Write effective blameless postmortems with root cause analysis, timelines, and action items. Use when conducting incident reviews, writing postmortem documents, or improving incident response processes.
81
71%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
99%
1.17xAverage score across 3 eval scenarios
Passed
No known issues
Optimize this skill with Tessl
npx tessl skill review --optimize ./plugins/incident-response/skills/postmortem-writing/SKILL.mdQuality
Discovery
100%Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.
This is a strong skill description that clearly communicates what the skill does and when to use it. It uses specific, natural terminology from the incident management domain and includes an explicit 'Use when' clause with relevant trigger scenarios. The description is concise yet comprehensive, making it easy for Claude to select appropriately.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions: 'Write effective blameless postmortems', 'root cause analysis', 'timelines', and 'action items'. These are distinct, concrete deliverables. | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both 'what' (write blameless postmortems with root cause analysis, timelines, and action items) and 'when' (explicit 'Use when' clause covering incident reviews, writing postmortem documents, or improving incident response processes). | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Includes strong natural keywords users would say: 'postmortems', 'root cause analysis', 'incident reviews', 'postmortem documents', 'incident response', 'blameless', 'timelines', 'action items'. Good coverage of terms an engineer would naturally use. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Occupies a clear niche around incident postmortems and incident response. The terms 'blameless postmortem', 'root cause analysis', and 'incident review' are highly specific and unlikely to conflict with other skills. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
42%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
The skill provides excellent, concrete templates that are immediately actionable for writing postmortems, which is its strongest quality. However, it is severely bloated with explanatory content Claude doesn't need (blameless culture concepts, facilitation soft skills, basic do's/don'ts), and all content is crammed into a single file rather than being progressively disclosed through references to supporting documents.
Suggestions
Remove or drastically reduce the 'Core Concepts', 'Facilitation Guide', 'Anti-Patterns', and 'Best Practices' sections—Claude already understands blameless culture and meeting facilitation; keep only the templates and brief usage notes.
Split the three templates into a separate TEMPLATES.md file and reference it from the main skill, keeping only the Quick Postmortem template inline as a quick-start example.
Add a validation checklist step (e.g., 'Before finalizing, verify: all timeline entries have timestamps, every action item has an owner and due date, root cause analysis goes at least 3 levels deep').
Reduce the main SKILL.md to under 80 lines with a concise overview, one inline template example, and clear links to supporting files for additional templates and facilitation guidance.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The skill is extremely verbose at ~300+ lines. It explains concepts Claude already understands (blameless culture, what postmortems are, facilitation tips like 'encourage quiet participants'). The comparison table for blame-focused vs blameless, the 'When to Use This Skill' list, and the facilitation guide all add significant token overhead without providing novel, actionable information Claude wouldn't already know. | 1 / 3 |
Actionability | The skill provides three complete, copy-paste-ready markdown templates with realistic examples including specific times, metrics, and action item tables. The templates are concrete and immediately usable for generating postmortem documents. | 3 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The postmortem timeline (Day 0 through Quarterly) provides a clear sequence, and the meeting structure has time-boxed steps. However, there are no explicit validation checkpoints—no step to verify the postmortem is complete before finalizing, no checklist to ensure all required sections are filled, and no feedback loop for reviewing action item quality. | 2 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | Everything is in a single monolithic file with no references to external documents. The three full templates, facilitation guide, anti-patterns table, and best practices are all inline, creating a wall of content that could easily be split into separate referenced files (e.g., TEMPLATES.md, FACILITATION.md). | 1 / 3 |
Total | 7 / 12 Passed |
Validation
100%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 11 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
No warnings or errors.
- Repository
- wshobson/agents
- Commit
27a7ed9
- Reviewed
Table of Contents
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