{"id":"cs-blameless-incident-memo-headings","audience":"managers","category":"support-work","technique":"tone","track":"support","level":"advanced","title":"Write a blameless incident memo with four fixed headings","free":false,"task":"Write the memo for the VP of Customer Success. Use these four headings in capitals, in this order, each on its own line: WHAT HAPPENED, WHY IT HAPPENED, WHAT WE CHANGE, OPEN QUESTIONS. Name no individual as a cause. WHAT WE CHANGE has exactly 3 lines, each with an owner and a date. Plain text, under 170 words in total.","materialLabel":"Your material (attached to your prompt automatically)","material":"INCIDENT NOTES - Larkspur Health customer reports not syncing - Oct 27\n\nTimeline from the monitoring log:\n- 09:40 sync job to Larkspur starts failing (log shows token expired).\n- 10:25 Larkspur's admin emails Support: \"reports are empty.\"\n- 11:05 Support opens ticket, tags it P3.\n- 13:10 CSM Tomas sees the ticket, re-tags P1.\n- 15:30 token renewed, sync restored; reports backfilled by 17:00.\n\nChat excerpts: Sam wrote \"Dev never told anyone the token rotates every 90 days.\" Tomas wrote \"Support should have caught this at 11.\"\nCorrection from the log owner: an earlier draft said the failure began at 09:10; the log confirms 09:40.\n\nRoot causes agreed in review: no alert on expired tokens; ticket triage form has no field for \"customer data stale\"; no runbook for token renewal.\n\nActions agreed: Add token-expiry alert (Dev lead Bea, Nov 20). Add \"data stale\" field to triage form (Support lead Omar, Nov 13). Write token-renewal runbook (Tomas, Nov 18).\nOpen: whether to credit Larkspur is not decided; it needs Finance input. Customer impact: about 7 hours without fresh data.","rules":[{"type":"plainText"},{"type":"maxWords","max":170}],"mistakes":[{"title":"Blaming a person or team","why":"The AI repeats the chat excerpts, which point at Dev and Support.","fix":"Say: \"Blameless: describe process gaps, name no individual or team as the cause.\"","checks":["r0"]},{"title":"Using the draft time","why":"The AI picks 09:10 from the correction note.","fix":"Say: \"The failure began at 09:40, as the log confirms.\"","checks":["r1"]},{"title":"Leaving out owners and dates","why":"The AI writes actions as general intentions.","fix":"Say: \"Exactly 3 action lines, each with an owner and a date from the notes.\"","checks":["r2"]},{"title":"Promising a credit","why":"The AI adds that a credit will be issued.","fix":"Say: \"List the credit as an open question; do not decide it.\"","checks":["r2"]},{"title":"Getting markdown back","why":"AI adds bold and headings by default, which show up as stray symbols where this is pasted.","fix":"Say \"plain text, no bold, no headings, no asterisks\".","checks":["plainText"]},{"title":"Trusting the AI to count words","why":"The AI runs long and cannot count its own words.","fix":"Cap each part (\"each line under 12 words\") and add \"under N words in total\".","checks":["maxWords"]}],"promptHints":[{"label":"Names the four headings","patterns":["what happened","why it happened","what we change","open questions"]},{"label":"Asks for blameless wording","patterns":["blameless","no individual","name no","not blame"]},{"label":"Requires owner and date","patterns":["owner","date"]},{"label":"Says to use the log time","patterns":["09:40","log"]},{"label":"Asks for plain text","patterns":["plain","no bold","no markdown","no formatting","no headings"]},{"label":"Sets a word cap","patterns":["\\d+\\s*words","under \\d+","word"]}],"hint":"Fixed headings, a blameless rule and an owner plus date on every action turn a messy chat into a memo a VP can use.","mission":"Explain the incident to the VP without blaming anyone.","musts":["Four exact headings","Name no individual","Three changes with owner, date"],"rubricLabels":["The four headings WHAT HAPPENED, WHY IT HAPPENED, WHAT WE CHANGE and OPEN QUESTIONS appear in capitals in that order, and the memo does not name Sam, Tomas, Dev or Support as the cause","WHAT HAPPENED uses the 09:40 start time (not 09:10) and states the restore at 15:30; WHY IT HAPPENED gives the three process causes (no expiry alert, no stale-data field, no renewal runbook)","WHAT WE CHANGE has exactly 3 lines, each with the owner and date from the notes (Bea Nov 20, Omar Nov 13, Tomas Nov 18), and OPEN QUESTIONS says the Larkspur credit is not decided"]}