Learn

Generate Operations Documentation

⏱ 2 min read🟡 Intermediate · 45-60 minutesEdit on GitHub ↗

Overview

Use CALM docify to generate support documentation and incident report templates directly from your architecture's operational metadata.

Learning objectives

By the end of this tutorial, you will:

Create three Handlebars templates for operations documentation
Generate service runbooks, on-call references, and flow support guides with calm docify
Understand how to integrate documentation generation into a CI/CD pipeline
See how architecture becomes the single source of truth for operations docs

Prerequisites

Complete Use CALM as Your Operations Advisor first. You will need your architectures/ecommerce-platform.json enriched with operational metadata from the Use CALM as Your Operations Advisor lesson.

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Understand the Ops Documentation Goal

Your architecture from the Use CALM as Your Operations Advisor lesson now contains:

Owner and on-call contacts per service
Health endpoints and runbook links
Failure modes with symptoms and remediation
Business impact per flow
Monitoring dashboard links

Today you'll create templates that extract this into:

Service Runbook — Per-service troubleshooting guide
On-Call Quick Reference — Single-page contact sheet
Flow Support Guide — Flow-organized support guide for support teams

2. Create the Ops Template Directory

mkdir -p templates/ops

3. Create the Service Runbook Template

File: templates/ops/service-runbook.md

# Service Runbooks

Generated from architecture: {{metadata.name}}

---

{{#each nodes}}
{{#if (eq node-type "service")}}
## {{name}}

**Unique ID:** `{{unique-id}}`

### Ownership

| Field | Value |
|-------|-------|
| Owner | {{metadata.owner}} |
| On-Call Slack | {{metadata.oncall-slack}} |
| Tier | {{metadata.tier}} |
| Runbook | {{metadata.runbook}} |

### Health & Monitoring

- **Health Endpoint:** `{{metadata.health-endpoint}}`
- **Dashboard:** {{metadata.dashboard}}

### Known Failure Modes

{{#if metadata.failure-modes}}
{{#each metadata.failure-modes}}
#### {{symptom}}

| Aspect | Details |
|--------|---------|
| **Likely Cause** | {{likely-cause}} |
| **How to Check** | {{check}} |
| **Remediation** | {{remediation}} |
| **Escalation** | {{escalation}} |

{{/each}}
{{else}}
No failure modes documented yet.
{{/if}}

---

{{/if}}
{{/each}}

4. Create the On-Call Quick Reference Template

File: templates/ops/oncall-reference.md

# On-Call Quick Reference

**Architecture:** {{metadata.name}}

## Service Contacts

| Service | Owner | On-Call Channel | Tier |
|---------|-------|-----------------|------|
{{#each nodes}}
{{#if (eq node-type "service")}}
| {{name}} | {{metadata.owner}} | {{metadata.oncall-slack}} | {{metadata.tier}} |
{{/if}}
{{/each}}

## Database Contacts

| Database | DBA Contact | Backup Schedule | Restore Time |
|----------|-------------|-----------------|--------------|
{{#each nodes}}
{{#if (eq node-type "database")}}
| {{name}} | {{metadata.dba-contact}} | {{metadata.backup-schedule}} | {{metadata.restore-time}} |
{{/if}}
{{/each}}

## Critical Flows & Business Impact

{{#each flows}}
### {{name}}

- **Business Impact:** {{metadata.business-impact}}
- **SLA:** {{metadata.sla}}
- **Degraded Behavior:** {{metadata.degraded-behavior}}
- **Customer Communication:** {{metadata.customer-communication}}

---

{{/each}}

## Monitoring Links

{{#if metadata.monitoring}}
| Resource | Link |
|----------|------|
| Grafana Dashboard | {{metadata.monitoring.grafana-dashboard}} |
| Kibana Logs | {{metadata.monitoring.kibana-logs}} |
| PagerDuty | {{metadata.monitoring.pagerduty-service}} |
| Status Page | {{metadata.monitoring.statuspage}} |
{{/if}}

5. Create the Flow Support Guide Template

File: templates/ops/flow-support-guide.md

# Business Flow Support Guide

**Architecture:** {{metadata.name}}

---

{{#each flows}}
## {{name}}

**Description:** {{description}}

### Business Impact

| Aspect | Details |
|--------|---------|
| **Impact** | {{metadata.business-impact}} |
| **SLA** | {{metadata.sla}} |
| **Degraded Mode** | {{metadata.degraded-behavior}} |
| **Customer Message** | {{metadata.customer-communication}} |

### Flow Path

| Step | Relationship | Description |
|------|--------------|-------------|
{{#each transitions}}
| {{sequence-number}} | `{{relationship-unique-id}}` | {{description}} |
{{/each}}

### Troubleshooting Checklist

When this flow is degraded:

1. Check the health endpoints for each service in the flow
2. Review circuit breaker status between services
3. Check message broker queue depths (if async)
4. Review recent deployments to services in this flow
5. Check database replication lag

---

{{/each}}

6. Generate the Operations Documents

# Generate service runbooks
calm docify -a architectures/ecommerce-platform.json \
  -t templates/ops/service-runbook.md \
  -o docs/ops/service-runbooks.md

# Generate on-call quick reference
calm docify -a architectures/ecommerce-platform.json \
  -t templates/ops/oncall-reference.md \
  -o docs/ops/oncall-reference.md

# Generate flow support guide
calm docify -a architectures/ecommerce-platform.json \
  -t templates/ops/flow-support-guide.md \
  -o docs/ops/flow-support-guide.md

Note: HTTP resolution failure can be ignored—example.com is a fictitious domain used for demonstration purposes.

7. Review Generated Documents

Open each generated document and verify:

Service runbooks contain all your services with their failure modes
On-call reference has correct contacts
Flow support guide documents each business flow with its impact and troubleshooting steps

8. Integrate with CI/CD for Always Up-to-Date Docs

Your architecture is the source of truth. When it changes, docs should regenerate automatically.

Example GitHub Actions step:

- name: Generate operations documentation
  run: |
    calm docify -a architectures/ecommerce-platform.json \
      -t templates/ops/service-runbook.md \
      -o docs/ops/service-runbooks.md
    calm docify -a architectures/ecommerce-platform.json \
      -t templates/ops/oncall-reference.md \
      -o docs/ops/oncall-reference.md
    calm docify -a architectures/ecommerce-platform.json \
      -t templates/ops/flow-support-guide.md \
      -o docs/ops/flow-support-guide.md

Benefits:

Documentation never goes stale
No manual effort to keep docs updated
Changes to architecture are automatically reflected
Single source of truth for both architecture and docs

This is a good point to stage and commit your changes with git, preserving a clear record of your work.

Key concepts

Template → Generated Doc Flow

Architecture JSON (source of truth)
    │
    ├── templates/ops/service-runbook.md (Handlebars template)
    │                    │
    │                    ▼  calm docify
    │              docs/ops/service-runbooks.md (generated)
    │
    ├── templates/ops/oncall-reference.md
    │                    │
    │                    ▼  calm docify
    │              docs/ops/oncall-reference.md
    │
    └── templates/ops/flow-support-guide.md
                         │
                         ▼  calm docify
                   docs/ops/flow-support-guide.md

CI/CD Integration Options

Strategy	Trigger	When to Use
On every PR	Architecture file changed	Catch stale docs before merge
On merge to main	Always	Keep published docs current
Scheduled	Nightly	Safety net for out-of-band changes

Resources

Next steps

In the next tutorial, you'll create your first CALM Pattern — turning architecture templates into reusable, enforceable scaffolds that can both generate new architectures and validate existing ones!

Overview​

◎Learning objectives​

✓Prerequisites​

Step-by-Step Guide​

1. Understand the Ops Documentation Goal​

2. Create the Ops Template Directory​

3. Create the Service Runbook Template​

4. Create the On-Call Quick Reference Template​

5. Create the Flow Support Guide Template​

6. Generate the Operations Documents​

7. Review Generated Documents​

8. Integrate with CI/CD for Always Up-to-Date Docs​

◆Key concepts​

Template → Generated Doc Flow​

CI/CD Integration Options​

🔗Resources​

→Next steps​