Code RoomIncident communication drafter
HardPrep Room Coding #44

Incident communication drafter

Vibe & agenticAI agents & automationReliability & on-callSenior–Staff~16 min

During incidents, engineers either go silent on the status page or overshare speculation — both hurt. Design an agent that drafts incident communications: status-page updates, customer emails, the follow-up summary. Where exactly is the human gate, and which words can it never publish without review — think legal exposure, blame, root-cause claims? How would you evaluate the drafts before a real sev-one, and how do you convince the incident commander this helps rather than adds a step?

Implement
route_incident_draft(draft: str, postmortem_published: bool) → str
Examples
in["Checkout is degraded for some requests. We are investigating. Next update in 30 minutes.",false]out"queue_for_commander"
in["We have identified the root cause: a bad config push. Next update in 20 minutes.",false]out"block_root_cause_claim"
in["We are investigating possible data exposure in the export job. Next update in 15 minutes.",false]out"hold_for_legal_and_security"
What a strong answer looks like

Turn the fuzzy goal into a bounded agent task. Say what the agent reads, what it may do on its own versus draft for a human, and what it must never touch. Then earn the trust: how you’d verify it before rollout, and the pitch (the problem, what you built, why it matters).

0:00 of about 16 min

Agent build: design the agent in plain language (or narrate it). The coach grades the decomposition, the guardrails, the verification plan, and the pitch.

Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.