Write the steps the next person can run at 3am — preconditions, exact commands, expected output, and when to stop — instead of a wiki that assumes you are in the room. Use when something will be done without you, before you go on leave, or after an incident you do not want twice.
--- name: write-a-runbook category: productivity description: >- Write the steps the next person can run at 3am — preconditions, exact commands, expected output, and when to stop — instead of a wiki that assumes you are in the room. Use when something will be done without you, before you go on leave, or after an incident you do not want twice. --- # Write a Runbook A runbook is not documentation of how the system works. It is a procedure for one job, written so someone who has never done it can finish or escalate without you. If they have to understand the architecture to use it, you wrote a design doc and put it in the ops folder. The reader is tired, possibly paged, and does not have your context. Every sentence that requires you is a bug. ## One job per page The title is the job, in the words the page or the alert will use. - Weak: "Payments overview" - Strong: "Card charges are succeeding but webhooks are not arriving" If two jobs share a page, the 3am reader will run the wrong half. Split. Link related runbooks; do not merge them because the services share a repo. State **when to use this** in one line at the top, and **when not to** in the next. "Do not use this if payments are also failing — that is [other runbook]" saves a worse night.
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