How to use the Service runbook template

Start a board from it
Use this template opens a new Freero board with the Service runbook template on it (sign up free first). On a board you already have, open Templates in the toolbar and search for “Service runbook”.
Follow the instruction on the board
“Write it for someone who has never seen this service. Test it: hand it to a teammate during a drill and fix every step they had to ask about.”
Fill in each part
- What does this service do, and who notices when it breaks? One paragraph and the user-facing symptom.
- Which alerts point here? Alert names, dashboards and what normal looks like.
- First five minutes: what do I check? In order, with the exact command or link.
- Which fixes are safe to try? Actions anyone on call may take without asking.
- What must I never do? Actions that make things worse or lose data.
- Who do I call, and when? Escalation path with response times.
Bring your team and your agents
Invite people to the board or share a link, and work on it together live. The timer is in the top bar, private mode and voting in the board menu, and Claude or ChatGPT can join through Freero’s MCP server.

Work on it with an AI agent

Connect an assistant once and it works on the board with you, with your permissions: by default it reads and proposes, and people decide.

You ask: “Fill in the Service runbook board from these notes.”
What happens It reads the board, then proposes sticky notes for it. Nothing changes until someone on the board accepts them.
You ask: “Group what we wrote into themes and list the actions.”
What happens It proposes clusters with a title each and task cards for the actions, labelled with its name and yours.

On-call handover
Hand the pager over cleanly: what happened this week, what’s still open, what to watch and what the next person needs to know.
Incident timeline
What happened when during an outage, from first alert to follow-up, with impact and lessons.
Incident response roles
Who does what when a serious incident starts: the incident lead in the middle, and the roles that support them.
On-call health check
Ask how on-call is really going for the people who carry the pager: load, sleep, support and what would make it fairer.
Service ownership map
Who owns each service, where its docs and dashboards live, how critical it is and who to call when it breaks.
Observability plan
Decide what to measure for a service: the question each signal answers, where it lives and when it should wake someone up.