Before the servers go down
A 30-second daily ritual for engineering teams. Bow at standup, bless every deploy, keep the kami (a fox spirit with opinions) fed, and watch your shrine grow with every quiet day. When something breaks anyway, the whole team prays through it, live.
Down for 00:00
Hand the watch to
Nobody else is kneeling here. Send them the link, and hand it over when they come.
Today’s forecast
What it watches
Name the services you run and its lines will look at those. When a vigil names one, it points at it.
Clearing cache and karma…
A day at the shrine
It watches nothing and fixes nothing. It gives the team thirty seconds a day to show up for prod, and a shrine to show for it.
09:30Standup
Your first bow of the day is the morning bow: +5 karma, and the kami is fed. Mornings in a row make a run, with a bonus every seventh. The kami’s forecast for the day is one copy away from the team channel.
11:00Deploy
Say what is going out and the shrine reads the omens first. Shipped rings the bells and keeps the clean run going; It broke opens the vigil, already named.
18:00Handover
Whoever holds the pager kneels on the on-call stool. Hand it to whoever is next: a watch of an hour or more with nothing down pays the room +10.
19:00Forgot?
Turn on notifications and the shrine calls you back: in the morning at about the time you usually bow, at 7 pm if your run is still waiting, when the kami goes hungry, and the moment something goes down.
02:13Rarely
Your alerts open the vigil and the phones that asked ring. The team prays through it together, on the war-room TV too, and when it is back the credits roll.
MondayEvery week
Keepers this week starts over, so anyone can top it by Friday. Make the week’s vow together, and when the karma is there, three bows from three people raise the next level.
Rituals
Say what is shipping and the room bows while it goes out. First the shrine reads the omens: Friday, after 4 pm, a hungry kami, a full moon, Mercury retrograde. Shipped rings the bells and keeps the clean run going; It broke opens the vigil, named after the deploy. Nothing is ever stopped.
Every morning the kami reads the sky over your shrine, from Clear skies to Typhoon watch, one worse on a Friday, under a full moon or while Mercury is retrograde. A line about what it watches, a lucky offering, a lucky hour and one thing to avoid. The whole team reads the same one until midnight UTC.
An omikuji for engineers: five levels from Great blessing to Great curse, with a line about the deploy, the night on call and plain luck. One per person per vigil.
Write what happened and burn it in the censer. The words never leave your browser; the room only learns that a confession was burned. Blameless, with a flame.
The shrine grows
Each level lays more mats, from one to twelve. The silk one and the cushions go to whoever earned the most karma this week; everyone past the mats stands at the back, and whoever holds the pager gets the on-call stool.
Karma brings the carpenters, not the roof. Scaffolding goes up, and three different people have to bow within a day to raise it. Bow in chorus, three within four seconds, and the bells ring for bonus karma. Every level opens a new sound for the room.
Neglect shows on the building: dust after a day, cobwebs after two, weeds over the last two mats after four, and after a week a tanuki moves in. A shrine never shrinks.
From the village shrine up, the clouds hang from the torii as donor lanterns. Pick yours and its lantern is lit, and the plaque reads its region. Heroku’s free tier hangs there too, dark, with a cobweb.
And for the team: Keepers this week, a weekly vow, seventeen charms to collect, and credits that roll for everyone when the servers come back.
Made for the incident channel
Reads what these already send
Phones that asked get a notification either way.
TV pairing · live from the war room
Cast your shrine to the war-room TV with a six-letter code. Between incidents it counts the quiet days, shows who is on call and reads out the kami’s forecast. When something goes down it is the screen everybody watches, and anyone who scans it kneels on the big screen.
The live demo plays on larger screens.
Kneel at this altar →Try it on this TV · live
Paired. is on the TV.
On a phone? Kneel at the demo now, then open this page on a laptop to watch yourself land on the TV. Kneel at the demo →
Any shrine, any screen
The TV only watches, so it never counts as someone praying, and it stays paired for the next incident. Prefer a link? Add ?tv=1 to any shrine.
You opened this shrine in another tab. The kami counts knees, not tabs, and you only brought two.
One slip per vigil. The box is shaken, the stick is drawn, the paper is read.
The room earns each charm once, and keeps it.
TV pairing · getting a code
No laptop? Scan with your phone.
This screen only watches: it never counts as someone praying. It stays paired, so the next incident goes up the same way.
Casting