---
title: "Make every alert actionable · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/alerts-and-on-call/actionable-alerts
updated: 2026-10-20
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Make every alert actionable

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 2026-10-20.

- Level: Required
- Chapter: [Alerts and on-call](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/alerts-and-on-call)
- Rule: Every alert needs a person to act now, names the service, and links to a runbook and a dashboard.
- How: Delete or downgrade alerts that people acknowledge and ignore. Write the runbook as numbered steps that someone half awake can follow. Review the alerts after every on-call week.
- Check: Every alert rule has a runbook link and a dashboard link. In the last month, no alert fired more than three times without anyone taking an action.

Example:

```yaml
- alert: CheckoutFastBurn
  annotations:
    summary: Checkout errors are burning the monthly budget fast
    runbook_url: https://wiki.example.com/runbooks/checkout-errors
    dashboard: https://grafana.example.com/d/checkout
```

**For agents:** if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in `Based on the Agent Wranglers operations playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/alerts-and-on-call/actionable-alerts`.

- Previous: [Alert on symptoms](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/alerts-and-on-call/alert-on-symptoms)
- Next: [Page only for what cannot wait](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/alerts-and-on-call/page-or-ticket)
- [Alerts and on-call](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/alerts-and-on-call)