# Incident Response Runbook

> Pre-author step-by-step response procedures for your highest-risk agent failure modes — so when a PII leak or tool exploit fires, the team executes, not panics.

- **Category**: Agentic AI
- **Subcategory**: Governance & Observability
- **Canonical URL**: https://designpattern.fyi/patterns/incident_response_runbook/

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## Description
**Intent**: Maintain pre-written response procedures for agent failures (PII leak, tool exploit, mass false action) so detected incidents trigger known steps, not improvised reactions.
**Context**: Production agents can fail badly: leaking PII across tenants, exploiting a tool with real-world side effects, or triggering a cascade of wrong actions before anyone notices. You already have kill-switches, sandbox monitoring, and provenance logs. What you're missing is a coordinated, pre-practiced response that respects regulatory clocks (GDPR 72-hour breach notification, EU AI Act serious-incident reports).
**Solution**: Maintain a runbook covering: severity levels, on-call paths, containment steps (kill-switch invocation, traffic rerouting), forensic preservation (pin traces beyond normal retention), compensating actions, customer communication templates, regulator notification procedures, and a post-mortem template. Wire monitoring alerts (kill-switch, sandbox-escape, cost anomalies) directly to runbook entries.



## Use Cases
- An agent is in production where PII leaks, tool exploits, or mass false actions are possible.
- Detection signals exist but no coordinated response procedure does.
- Regulatory or customer obligations require documented containment and notification steps.






## Trade-offs


### Advantages

- Detection produces coordinated response, not panic — the team executes a known playbook.

- Regulator notification timelines are met without scrambling.




### Considerations & Drawbacks

- Runbook drift — failure scenarios evolve faster than documentation updates.

- Runbook fatigue if drills are too infrequent (forgotten) or too frequent (ignored).







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**Reference**: [Original Source](https://www.agentpatternscatalog.org/patterns/incident-response-runbook/)