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.

Quality

73%

Does it follow best practices?

Run evals on this skill

Adds up to 20 points to the overall score

View guide

Securityby

Passed

No findings from the security scan

Fix and improve this skill with Tessl

tessl review fix ./plugins/incident-response/skills/postmortem-writing/SKILL.md

Quality

Content

63%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

The body is well-sectioned and offers genuinely actionable, example-filled templates, but it self-contradicts its own progressive-disclosure claim by inlining large templates that it says live in references/details.md, and a stray code fence mars the structure.

Suggestions

Move the inlined Template 2 (5 Whys) and Template 3 (Quick Postmortem) into references/details.md, keeping only a one-line pointer plus a compact Quick Start in SKILL.md.

Remove the orphaned ``` fence on line 60 so the '## References' section renders as normal markdown rather than a broken code block.

Add explicit validation checkpoints to the postmortem workflow (e.g., 'Verify the timeline is complete and evidence-linked before the postmortem meeting').

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body is mostly structured but inlines two full worked templates (5 Whys ~60 lines, Quick Postmortem) and the entire facilitation meeting script that the body itself says belong in references/details.md, so it could be tightened; not a 2 because the content is domain-specific rather than padded with concepts Claude already knows.	3 / 5
Actionability	Provides copy-paste-ready templates with realistic filled-in evidence (5 Whys answers, timeline tables, action-item tables) and a timed meeting agenda covering common cases; not a 5 because there is no single end-to-end executable procedure and the stray markdown fence is a defect.	4 / 5
Workflow Clarity	The Quick Start gives a sequenced Day-0-to-Quarterly timeline and the Facilitation Guide gives a clearly time-boxed 60-minute meeting sequence; not a 5 because validation checkpoints (e.g., confirm timeline completeness before the meeting) are implicit rather than explicit.	4 / 5
Progressive Disclosure	The reference to references/details.md is clearly signaled in its own section and the file exists, but the body then inlines ~150 lines of template content that clearly belongs in that separate file, and an orphaned ``` fence (line 60) breaks structure — matching the 'structure with inlined content that should be separate' anchor.	3 / 5
	Total	14 / 20 Passed

Description

83%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

A strong, third-person description that clearly answers both what the skill does and when to use it, with concrete actions and natural trigger terms. Minor room to add synonyms and tighten the broad 'incident response processes' wording.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	Names the domain plus three concrete actions ('root cause analysis, timelines, and action items'), comparable to the 'Extracts text, fills forms, converts pages' anchor; not a 5 because coverage of the full postmortem workflow could include facilitation/detection.	4 / 5
Completeness	Explicitly states what ('Write effective blameless postmortems with root cause analysis, timelines, and action items') and when ('Use when conducting incident reviews, writing postmortem documents, or improving incident response processes') with concrete trigger phrases, matching the top anchor.	5 / 5
Trigger Term Quality	Includes natural user phrases ('incident reviews', 'writing postmortem documents', 'incident response processes') matching the 'PDF files, forms, document extraction' anchor; not a 5 because synonyms like 'post-incident review', 'RCA', or 'retrospective' are absent.	4 / 5
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	The 'blameless postmortems' / 'root cause analysis' framing carves a clear niche with minimal conflict, but 'improving incident response processes' is broad and could overlap with general incident-response/SRE skills, so it sits at 'mostly distinct; minor overlap' rather than 5.	4 / 5
	Total	17 / 20 Passed

Validation

93%

Warnings & errors only

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation — 15 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

Criteria	Description	Result
relative_links	Relative link issues: 2 missing	Warning

	Total	15 / 16 Passed

Repository: wshobson/agents
Path: plugins/incident-response/skills/postmortem-writing/SKILL.md
Commit: d6837ae

Reviewed: about 11 hours ago

Table of Contents

Discovery Implementation Validation

Is this your skill?

If you maintain this skill, you can claim it as your own. Once claimed, you can manage eval scenarios, bundle related skills, attach documentation or rules, and ensure cross-agent compatibility.