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 that engineers would use when seeking help with incident postmortems. The description is concise, uses third person voice, and includes an explicit 'Use when' clause with relevant trigger scenarios.
| 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 root cause analysis. The combination of 'blameless postmortems', 'incident reviews', and 'incident response' is 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 highly actionable, realistic postmortem templates that are immediately usable, which is its primary strength. However, it is severely bloated — the inline content is far too long for a SKILL.md, with extensive explanations of concepts Claude already understands (blameless culture, facilitation basics) and three full templates that should be in separate referenced files. The lack of progressive disclosure and validation checkpoints significantly weakens the overall quality.
Suggestions
Move the three templates into separate referenced files (e.g., TEMPLATE_STANDARD.md, TEMPLATE_5WHYS.md, TEMPLATE_QUICK.md) and keep only a brief overview with links in SKILL.md.
Remove the 'Core Concepts' section on blameless culture and the 'When to Use This Skill' list — Claude already understands these concepts and can infer when to apply the skill.
Move the facilitation guide to a separate FACILITATION.md file, referenced from the main skill.
Add a validation checklist (e.g., 'Before finalizing: verify all action items have owners, confirm timeline has no gaps, ensure root cause addresses systemic issues not individual blame') to improve workflow clarity.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | Extremely verbose at ~300+ lines. Explains concepts Claude already knows (blameless culture, what postmortems are, facilitation tips like 'encourage quiet participants'). The 'When to Use This Skill' and 'Core Concepts' sections are largely unnecessary padding. The full example postmortem, while illustrative, is excessively detailed and could be a referenced template file rather than inline content. | 1 / 3 |
Actionability | Provides three complete, copy-paste-ready markdown templates (standard, 5 Whys, quick postmortem) with realistic examples including specific timelines, action item tables with owners and due dates, and concrete analysis patterns. The templates are immediately usable. | 3 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The postmortem timeline (Day 0 through Quarterly) provides a clear sequence, and the meeting facilitation guide has a structured agenda. However, there are no validation checkpoints — no guidance on reviewing draft quality before finalizing, no checklist to verify action items are properly scoped, and no feedback loop for ensuring the postmortem document meets quality standards before sharing. | 2 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | Monolithic wall of text with everything inline. Three full templates, a facilitation guide, anti-patterns table, and best practices are all crammed into a single file. The templates should be separate referenced files, and the facilitation guide could easily be its own document. No bundle files are provided to offload this content. | 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
34632bc
- Reviewed
Table of Contents
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