AFOPS — AI-Friendly Operational Procedures Standard

Name: afops
Rating: 92
Author: securitymonster

Use this skill to document operational procedures that are fail-safe, composable, and executable by humans or AI agents.

When to Use

•Writing deployment, rollback, or scaling procedures
•Documenting backup and restore processes
•Creating maintenance or patching runbooks
•Setting up operational procedure registries
•Defining escalation matrices and approval workflows

Key Deliverables

code

docs/
  runbook.md              ← index of all procedures (AFADS required)
  procedures/
    deploy.md             ← one file per procedure
    rollback.md
    backup.md
    restore.md
    scale.md
    ...
  procedures.yaml         ← procedure registry

Procedure Types

Type	Description
`deploy`	Deploy or upgrade a component
`rollback`	Revert a deployment or change
`backup`	Create a backup of data or state
`restore`	Restore from a backup
`maintenance`	Planned maintenance task (cert rotation, etc.)
`scale`	Scale a component up or down
`migrate`	Migrate data or configuration
`patch`	Apply a security or bug fix patch

Procedure Metadata Schema

yaml

---
procedure_id: deploy-api-service
name: Deploy API Service
type: deploy
component_id: api-service              # AFADS component_id
scope: [staging, prod]
criticality: high                      # low | medium | high | critical
owner: platform-team
last_reviewed: 2026-02-06
requires_approval: true
estimated_duration: 15-30min
depends_on_procedures: [backup-api-db] # optional: must run first
rollback_procedure_id: rollback-api-service  # optional
change_window: any                     # any | maintenance-only | business-hours
notification_channels: ["#prod-ops"]   # optional
---

Required Body Sections

Every procedure MUST include these sections in order:

markdown

## Purpose
One to three sentences: what this does and when to use it.

## Prerequisites

### Access Requirements
- kubectl access to cluster: prod
- Helm >= 3.14

### Dependencies
- Procedure `backup-api-db` must complete first

### Approval
- Requires sign-off from: on-call lead

## Pre-flight Checks
1. Verify cluster is healthy: `kubectl get nodes`
   **Expected:** All nodes `Ready`
   **Abort if:** Any node `NotReady`

## Steps

### Step 1: <title>
**Abort if:** <condition>
**Time limit:** <duration>
**Rollback:** <how to undo this step>

1. <action>
   ```bash
   <command>

Expected: <output> If unexpected: <guidance>

Step 2: <title>

...

Verification

•
Check endpoint health
bash
```
curl https://api.example.com/health
```
Expected: HTTP 200

Rollback

•
Revert to previous version
bash
```
helm rollback api-service
```

Escalation

Condition	Action	Escalate to	Response time
Step fails after retry	Page on-call	#incident-channel	15 min
Data loss suspected	Stop all changes	Engineering lead	Immediate

Post-procedure Tasks

• Update deployment log
• Notify stakeholders
• Verify monitoring dashboards

code


## Procedure Registry (procedures.yaml)

```yaml
procedures:
  - procedure_id: deploy-api-service
    name: Deploy API Service
    type: deploy
    component_id: api-service
    path: docs/procedures/deploy.md
    criticality: high
    scope: [staging, prod]
    owner: platform-team
    last_reviewed: 2026-02-06

Core Principles

•Procedures are code — version-controlled and peer-reviewed, not wiki pages
•Composable — reference other procedures by procedure_id, don't duplicate steps
•Fail-safe — every step has abort criteria, rollback, and escalation
•Explicit about state — declare preconditions, postconditions, and invariants
•Self-contained — executable by someone (or an AI agent) with no prior context
•Testable — must be executable in non-production environments

Cross-References

•component_id MUST match an AFADS component
•AFSS controls may reference procedures via verification_procedure_id
•AFRS roadmap items may reference procedures via procedure_id

Full Standard

https://github.com/securitymonster/afdocs/blob/main/OPS-STANDARD.md