An AI runbook generator for on-call engineers, built from the steps your team runs
At three in the morning an on-call engineer does not want an essay. They want to know what the alert means, what to check, what they are allowed to do and who to wake if it does not work. INKFLOW drafts an IT operations incident SOP and a set of runbooks with that reader in mind.
Put 'IT runbook and incident SOP' in your brief and the writer works from guidance for operations runbooks, asking for your service catalogue, severity definitions, on-call rota, escalation routes, tooling and the alerts you want covered.
The commands, dashboards and log locations come from your engineers. Where a step needs a command nobody has supplied, the runbook shows a marked placeholder, never an invented command that someone might paste into production. Treat every runbook as a draft until the people who run the service have tried it and approved it.
How the runbook generator builds your incident SOP
1
Define what is in scope
Services, owners, dependencies and how critical each one is. A runbook that does not say which service it belongs to gets ignored.
2
Agree severity and escalation
Your existing priority levels with examples, response and update targets, and the triggers that move an incident up the chain. If you have contractual service levels, include them.
3
Pick the alerts
List alert names exactly as they fire, in priority order, with the diagnosis and fix steps your engineers use. One runbook is written per alert or failure mode.
4
Try them on a quiet shift
Order at the link below, with the cost shown up front, then have the on-call team follow each runbook against a staging system before you sign it off.
What each IT runbook contains
Symptom first
What the alert looks like, what users are probably seeing and how to confirm it is real, before any action is taken.
Checks with expected results
Each diagnostic step says what a healthy result looks like, so the engineer knows whether to move on or stop.
Mitigations you have approved
Only the actions on-call staff are allowed to take, who authorises an emergency change, and how to roll back.
Escalation that never hangs on one person
Roles and backups, out-of-hours contact routes and the moment to escalate, by elapsed time or by condition.
A security exit
If the symptoms suggest a compromise rather than a fault, the runbook hands over to your security incident process instead of carrying on.
Communication and review
Status page and customer update rules from your policy, and the triggers for a blameless post-incident review with its actions tracked.
Runbook writing, not runbook automation
INKFLOW writes documents. It does not connect to your monitoring, run commands, open tickets or page anyone. If you were searching for a tool that executes runbooks automatically, this is not that; it gives you the written procedure that such a tool, or a person, follows.
Nor can it know how your systems behave. Exact error strings, service names and safe limits come from you, and the draft is for your operations lead to review.
Questions
Can it turn our wiki notes into runbooks?
Yes, paste them into the brief. The notes are reorganised into the runbook structure, and any step they leave vague is flagged as a placeholder for an engineer to fill.
Does it follow ITIL?
The incident SOP uses ideas most service teams share, such as severity, escalation, communication and review, which line up with ITIL practice. If you send your own process or terminology list, your terms are used.
What about NIS or regulator reporting?
Tell the writer whether those rules apply to you and who owns notifications. The SOP routes to that owner; it does not decide whether you are in scope.
How many alerts can one order cover?
As many as you list. The order page quotes for what you describe before you pay.
Can someone outside our team check it?
You can ask for a human reviewer to be quoted when you order. Nothing is charged for that unless you accept the quote.
Do prices include VAT?
Prices include any VAT; nothing is added at checkout.
We are an organisation. How can we pay?
Single orders are paid by card at checkout. For subscriptions and repeat orders, care homes, councils and businesses can ask about paying by Direct Debit or standing order at app.inkflowstudio.org/organisations.
Hand the next on-call engineer something they can follow.
Tell us what it is for, and it is written to the standard. In the free sample, any figure that must come from your own material is left as a marked placeholder.