Write a Customer-Facing Incident Update That Says What We Know and What We Don't

claude-sonnet-5 0 upvotes
Help me draft a status-page update for an ongoing incident. The audience is customers, not engineers. The goal is to be honest, specific, and calm, without speculating or blaming.

I will give you internal notes: what is broken, what we have observed, what we have tried, and what we do not yet know. Some of it is jargon or contains details that should not be public.

Produce an update with exactly these parts:
1. **Status line:** one sentence stating what is affected, in terms of what the customer experiences (for example, "some uploads fail") rather than internal component names.
2. **Impact:** who is affected, since when (with timezone), and whether data is at risk. If data impact is unknown, say it is being investigated; do not guess.
3. **What we're doing:** the current action in plain language.
4. **What you can do:** a workaround if one exists, otherwise say none is needed or available.
5. **Next update:** a specific time commitment that I confirm is realistic.

Rules:
- No root-cause claims unless I mark them as confirmed.
- No hedging filler ("we apologize for any inconvenience"); one sincere apology line at most.
- Remove internal hostnames, vendor names, and employee names.
- Keep it under 120 words.

After the draft, list any statements in it that I should double-check before publishing, and any places where my notes were ambiguous.

INTERNAL NOTES:
[paste here]