Quickstart

Traversal Investigation page

Spin up an investigation, ask about an incident, or just explore your system by asking natural-language questions.

Add Context Quickly

• @-key and autocomplete: Type @ to reference teams, services, applications, environments, or other scoped entities. Use the dropdown or autocomplete to pick the right item.

• Paste it in: You can paste an incident description directly (snippets from a ticket, Slack thread, or alert). Traversal parses entities (teams/services) and extracts the date/time if present.

Time Window is Required for Manual Deep Mode

When in deep mode, Traversal needs a start date/time with a timezone. If you paste an incident description that includes time, we’ll parse it automatically; otherwise, use the date/time controls on the page.

Examples that parse well: “Oct 23 20:00 UTC”, “10/23/2024 at 20:00 UTC”, “Oct 23 4pm ET 2024”, "5pm EST yesterday".

Good Descriptions Improve Results

Include when the issue started, error messages, affected teams/services, and any alert/runbook links. More specific context results in better diagnostics.

Follow Ups

If the first pass isn’t perfect, ask follow-up questions in the web app or Slack thread. You can drill into any symptom, slice the timeline, or request more detail. To change the analysis window, start a new investigation with the revised time range.

Tip: If Traversal’s first triage doesn’t capture the nuance, reply with @Traversal and additional context (e.g., “focus on payments-api in prod-us-east after 12:05 UTC”).

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Post-Mortem (from an Investigation)

Turn any investigation into a polished post-mortem in one click.

1. From the investigation header, choose Create Post-Mortem (or Export).

2. Pick a template (blameless by default) and include:

   • Summary of Investigation

   • Candidate Root Causes & timelines

   • Impact snapshot

   • All cited evidence with links (dashboards, traces, PRs)

3. Add human notes and remediation items.

4. Export to Markdown or PDF for sharing/download.