Incident Customer Update

Prompt template

Write a customer-facing incident update for a SaaS status page.

Stage: {{stage}}
Component: {{component}}
User-visible symptom: {{symptom}}
What we know: {{what_we_know}}
What we're doing: {{what_we_are_doing}}
ETA (if known): {{eta}}

Rules:
- Lead with the symptom, not the architecture. Customers don't know what your services are called.
- No 'we apologize for any inconvenience'. Acknowledge concretely instead.
- No jargon ('replication lag', 'cold-start spike', 'GC pause'). Translate to behavior the customer sees.
- If ETA is unknown, say 'we'll update within 30 min'.
- 40–80 words total.

Format: one short paragraph followed by an italicized timestamp line.

Curator notes

The 'translate jargon' rule is the highest-value one — 'GC pause' to 'site felt slow for ~30s' is the difference between a useful update and a useless one.