Rootly Services

Rootly Services

Overview

The Rootly service catalog provides a centralized registry of all services in your infrastructure. Each service has ownership, tier classification, dependencies, and is linked to incidents and alerts. This enables rapid identification of affected components during incidents and accurate impact assessment.

Key Concepts

Service Tiers

Services are classified by business criticality:

• Tier 1 / Critical -- Revenue-generating, customer-facing services (e.g., payment processing, API gateway)
• Tier 2 / High -- Important internal services (e.g., CI/CD, monitoring)
• Tier 3 / Medium -- Supporting services (e.g., internal dashboards, dev tools)
• Tier 4 / Low -- Non-critical services (e.g., documentation sites)

Service Ownership

Each service has:

• Owner Team -- Team responsible for the service
• Slack Channel -- Communication channel for the service
• Escalation Policy -- How alerts are routed
• Runbooks -- Links to operational documentation

Service Dependencies

Rootly tracks upstream and downstream dependencies:

• Upstream -- Services this service depends on
• Downstream -- Services that depend on this service
• Impact Analysis -- When a service is affected, Rootly identifies dependent services at risk

API Patterns

List Services

rootly_list_services

Parameters:

• team -- Filter by owning team
• tier -- Filter by service tier
• environment -- Filter by environment

Example response:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "svc-001",
      "type": "services",
      "attributes": {
        "name": "payment-service",
        "slug": "payment-service",
        "description": "Handles payment processing via Stripe",
        "tier": "tier_1",
        "owner": { "name": "Platform Team" },
        "slack_channel": "#payment-service",
        "status": "operational",
        "incidents_count": 2,
        "dependencies_count": 3
      }
    }
  ]
}

Get Service Details

rootly_get_service

Parameters:

• service_id -- The service ID

Create Service

rootly_create_service

Parameters:

• name -- Service name (required)
• description -- Service description
• tier -- Service tier
• team_id -- Owning team ID
• slack_channel -- Associated Slack channel

Update Service

rootly_update_service

Parameters:

• service_id -- The service ID
• name -- Updated name
• description -- Updated description
• tier -- Updated tier
• team_id -- Updated owning team

Common Workflows

Service Health Check

1. Call rootly_list_services to get all services
2. Cross-reference with active incidents via rootly_list_incidents
3. Identify services with open incidents
4. Check dependency chains for cascading impact
5. Report overall service health summary

Service Dependency Analysis

1. Get service details with rootly_get_service
2. Review upstream and downstream dependencies
3. Identify single points of failure
4. Assess blast radius for potential outages
5. Recommend redundancy improvements

Incident Impact Assessment

1. Get incident details to identify affected services
2. For each affected service, look up downstream dependencies
3. Assess total impact scope (direct + transitive dependencies)
4. Determine affected teams and escalation paths
5. Communicate impact to relevant stakeholders

Error Handling

Service Not Found

Cause: Invalid service ID or service deleted Solution: List services to verify the correct ID

Duplicate Service Name

Cause: Service with this name already exists Solution: Use a unique name or update the existing service

Invalid Tier

Cause: Tier value doesn't match configured tiers Solution: Use valid tier values (tier_1, tier_2, tier_3, tier_4)

Best Practices

• Keep the service catalog up to date as infrastructure evolves
• Assign clear ownership for every service
• Map dependencies accurately for blast radius analysis
• Use consistent naming conventions for services
• Link services to monitoring dashboards and runbooks
• Review service tiers quarterly as business priorities change
• Tag services with environments for accurate incident scoping
• Track incident frequency per service to identify reliability gaps

Related Skills

• [api-patterns](../api-patterns/SKILL.md) - Pagination and error handling
• [incidents](../incidents/SKILL.md) - Incidents affecting services
• [alerts](../alerts/SKILL.md) - Alert routing by service
• [workflows](../workflows/SKILL.md) - Service-triggered workflows