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Getting started

This page walks you from zero to a generated postmortem in three minutes.

1. Install

brew tap jtprogru/tap
brew install srekit

go install github.com/jtprogru/srekit@latest

Requires Go 1.26+ (the module declares go 1.26.4).

Download from the GitHub Releases page for darwin, linux, or freebsd × arm64 / x86_64.

Confirm the install:

srekit --version
# srekit version: 0.32.1
# from commit: ...
# built date: ...
# built by: goreleaser

2. One-time configuration

Generators that record an author (rfc, oncall-report) resolve the identity in this order:

  1. --author / --email flags
  2. SREKIT_AUTHOR / SREKIT_EMAIL env vars
  3. author: / email: in the config file
  4. git config user.name / git config user.email

The config file lives at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/srekit/config.yaml (~/.config/srekit/config.yaml when the variable is unset). A pre-XDG ~/.srekit.yaml keeps working and wins if it already exists, so nothing to migrate.

If your global git config is already set, you can skip configuration entirely. To opt in to a yaml file:

srekit config init
# Author name [Mikhail Savin]: ⏎
# Email [jtprogru@gmail.com]: ⏎
# Templates dir (leave empty to use embedded templates only): ⏎
# Wrote /Users/jtprogru/.config/srekit/config.yaml

srekit config init --yes runs without prompts, using flag values and git config defaults. See Configuration & precedence for the full picture.

3. Your first artifact

A postmortem is a good starter — it exercises author resolution, title-based filenames, and the --out / --stdout flags:

srekit postmortem --title "API outage" --severity SEV-1 --stdout

That prints to stdout. To write to a file:

srekit postmortem --title "API outage" --severity SEV-1 \
  --start 2026-05-06T08:00Z --end 2026-05-06T09:30Z \
  --owner "@oncall" \
  --out postmortem-2026-05-06.md

Inspect it — every section is pre-filled with bilingual headings (Russian, with the English term in parentheses) and SRE-canonical fields (severity, timeline, impact, root cause, action items).

4. The unified flag set

Every generator command supports the same output flags:

Flag Effect
--out FILE write to FILE (refuses to overwrite without --force)
--stdout print to stdout
--force overwrite existing FILE
--dry-run show what would be written, do not write
--json emit the template data payload as JSON instead of rendering

There is no --template FILE flag: it was removed in v0.30.0 along with srekit license, the one command whose render path read it. Per-artifact customization is done by dropping a <name>.yaml into your templates_dir — see Custom templates workflow.

If you pass neither --out nor --stdout, each command has a sensible default filename (e.g. investigation-<slug>.md for srekit task, oncall-<team>-<start>.md for the on-call report).

5. Check the environment

If a generator picks the wrong author, or your customized templates look ignored, ask srekit what it resolved rather than guessing:

srekit doctor

It is read-only and makes no network request. srekit doctor --quiet prints only what needs attention, so silence means healthy — see srekit doctor.

6. What's next

You now have enough to use srekit day-to-day. To go deeper:

  • Custom templates workflow — fork the built-in artifacts into your own git repo and pull/merge upstream changes cleanly.
  • jtprogru/sre-templates — a ready-made templates repo in the exact layout srekit expects. Clone it and point templates_dir at it to skip scaffolding from scratch.
  • JSON output — pipe generators into jq for CI scripts and integrations.
  • Commands overview — full reference for every subcommand and flag.
  • Recipes — concrete workflows that combine srekit with your tooling.