# Blameless Postmortems

> Run blameless post-incident reviews that focus on systemic learning and concrete follow-up actions rather than individual blame. Use after incidents, near-misses, or significant production issues.

- Skill: `itsual/blameless-postmortems` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add itsual/blameless-postmortems`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/itsual/blameless-postmortems/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: itsual (https://skillmd.com/u/itsual)
- Updated: 2026-09-21
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/itsual/blameless-postmortems

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# Blameless Postmortems

## Overview

The goal of a postmortem is learning and improvement. Blame reduces psychological safety and hides valuable information.

## When to Use

- After production incidents
- After significant near-misses
- When a surprising failure mode is discovered

## Core Process

1. Timeline of what happened (facts first)
2. Impact assessment
3. Contributing factors and systemic causes (not “who failed”)
4. What went well / what helped
5. Action items with owners and due dates
6. Follow-up to ensure actions are completed

## Principles

- Assume people acted with the information and tools they had at the time
- Look for latent conditions and missing defenses
- Make action items specific, owned, and tracked
- Share learnings widely so the same incident is less likely elsewhere

## Verification

- Postmortem produces concrete, tracked improvements
- Participants feel safe to share what they actually observed
- Similar incidents become less frequent or less severe over time