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OpenClaw recipe

On-Call Shift Handoff and Context Transfer Brief Generator

aka “On-Call Shift Handoff Brief

Hand off the pager without making the next engineer reconstruct the shift

On-call handoffs usually happen fast, right when context is easiest to lose. The next engineer starts their shift digging through incidents, deploys, noisy alerts, and half-finished Slack threads just to understand the current state. This recipe pulls the shift's PagerDuty incidents, deploy activity, Datadog alerts, and open Slack threads into a clean handoff brief the next on-call can use immediately.

House RecipeWork5 min
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PROMPT

Generate an on-call shift handoff brief for a DevOps or SRE engineer. Goal: Help me close out my on-call shift with a clear operational handoff so the next engineer does not have to reconstruct state from Slack scrollback. Ask me for: - Shift start and end (UTC) - Services I covered - Active investigations with current state - Anything I expect to recur on the next shift - Follow-ups I owe but did not finish - Any deploys or changes the next person should know about - Slack channel for the handoff post Use available integrations this way: - PagerDuty: list incidents during my shift, severity, and resolution status - Datadog: list alerts that fired during my shift, including ones that auto-resolved - GitHub: list deploys and merged PRs in services I covered during the shift - Slack: scan incident channels I was in for unresolved threads and decisions - Linear: list any tickets I created or updated during the shift - Google Docs: write the handoff brief - Google Calendar: create a 15-minute handoff sync if the next on-call wants one Output: 1. A handoff brief with shift summary, incidents, deploys, and alerts 2. Open investigations with current state and what is blocked 3. Pending action items with owners 4. Watch list of services to monitor 5. A short Slack post for the on-call channel tagging my replacement 6. A handoff doc in Google Docs linking to all the source incidents and PRs Rules: - Only include facts pulled from the integrations or that I provide - Do not infer root causes; describe symptoms and current state - Do not include private information from Slack DMs, only public channels - Treat all timestamps as UTC unless I specify otherwise - Flag any investigation older than 48 hours as stale

How It Works

This recipe turns the end of an on-call shift into a structured

handoff. It pulls incidents from PagerDuty, deploys from GitHub,

alerts from Datadog, and unresolved context from Slack so the next

person starts with operational state, not guesswork.

What You Get

  • Shift summary covering incidents handled, deploys made, alerts fired, and time on pager
  • Open investigations the next on-call should continue
  • Pending follow-ups with owners and ETAs
  • Short watch list of services or symptoms to monitor
  • Google Doc handoff plus a Slack-ready post for the on-call channel

Setup Steps

  1. Ask OpenClaw to run the "On-Call Shift Handoff Brief" recipe using the prompt below
  2. Connect PagerDuty, Datadog, GitHub, Slack, Linear, and Google so the agent can read shift activity and post the handoff
  3. Run it 20 minutes before your shift ends so you have time to add operator context
  4. Review the draft and add anything the tools cannot know
  5. Post to the on-call channel and tag your replacement

Tips

  • Let the agent pull the facts. Add the judgment, risk, and "watch this closely" context yourself.
  • Keep the watch list short. "Monitor everything" is not a handoff.
  • For paused investigations, include the current hypothesis, blocker, and who owns the next move.
  • Good handoffs are interactive. The next on-call should ask questions before you sign off.
Tags:#devops#sre#on_call#handoff#operations#documentation