Writing runbooks REQUIRED BACKGROUND: the skill (hard rules, truth rules, style). Overview The reader is in a hurry, often mid-incident. Every runbook is ordered, one action per step, copy-pasteable, with danger marked where the eye already is. Write from a real run: every step one actually taken, every failure named one that actually happened. A procedure imagined at the desk is a draft, not a runbook. A partially exercised procedure may be published with per-branch honesty: name the variant that has not run yet, mark that branch draft, and ask its first real runner to report back. A procedu…