# Postmortems

A **postmortem** is your team's write-up of an incident: what happened, why, and what changes as a result. Each incident has one postmortem, in Markdown. The postmortem is internal, so only your team sees it. To tell customers, publish a separate write-up on the status page incident.

## Write a postmortem

1. Open the incident.
2. In the **Postmortem** panel, select **Start postmortem**. For a resolved incident, you can also select **Write postmortem** at the top.
3. Optional: in an empty postmortem, select **Insert template**.
4. Write the postmortem in Markdown.
5. Select **Save postmortem**.

You can start the postmortem while the incident is still open, and add to it as you go. After you resolve the incident, the **Postmortem** panel asks you to write it while the facts are fresh.

The headings of the postmortem make the **Outline** next to the editor. Select a heading in the outline to go to it.

## The template

**Insert template** fills in the facts that Spectate knows:

| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Summary | Space for two or three sentences about what happened. |
| Impact | The severity, start, end and duration of the incident, and a line for the customers affected. |
| Timeline | The declaration and every incident update, with its time and status. |
| Root cause | Empty. |
| Contributing factors | Empty list. |
| Resolution | Empty. |
| Action items | An empty checklist. |

## Mark the postmortem as final

Select **Published** in the **Publishing** panel, then select **Save postmortem**. **Published** marks the postmortem as final for your team. It does not make the postmortem public. Clear **Published** to make it a draft again.

## Tell customers

Spectate never shows the internal postmortem on a status page. To tell customers what happened, write a public write-up on the status page incident:

1. Open the status page incident that you published from the incident.
2. In the **Public write-up** panel, select **Start from postmortem**.
3. Edit the text for customers. Remove internal details.
4. Select **Published on the status page**.
5. Optional: select **Email subscribers the write-up**.
6. Select **Publish write-up**.

**Start from postmortem** copies the postmortem text. Later changes to the postmortem do not change the write-up. Spectate emails subscribers about a write-up only once, when you first publish it. See [status page incidents](/status-pages/incidents).

## Who can write postmortems

Owners, managers, admins and members can write and save postmortems. When you delete an incident, Spectate deletes its postmortem too.

## API and AI assistants

| Action | Public API | MCP tool |
|---|---|---|
| Read the postmortem | `GET /v1/incidents/{incident}/postmortem` | `get_incident_postmortem` |
| Save the postmortem | `PUT /v1/incidents/{incident}/postmortem` | `save_incident_postmortem` |

`PUT` takes `content`, the whole postmortem in Markdown, and an optional `published` boolean. The new content replaces the old content. If you leave out `published`, it keeps its value. See the [incidents API](/api-reference/incidents) and the [MCP server](/developers/mcp).

Through the MCP server, an AI assistant can draft a postmortem from the incident timeline. For example, ask: "Draft a postmortem for yesterday's incident from its timeline and save it."