Help Centre
Everything you need to use CommsCrisis, from the first incident to the fourth draft.
Getting started
CommsCrisis turns a set of incident facts into four audience-specific draft communications. It works entirely in your browser — no account, no sign-up, nothing to install.
Navigate to /app — or click App in the top navigation bar. You will see an incident-facts form on the left and a drafts area on the right.
Fill in the fields you have: severity, affected component, what users are experiencing, when it started, current state, what is being done, and a next update time (if known). Leave fields blank if you do not have the information yet — the drafts will show a clearly marked gap instead of guessing.
If the component name is internal (e.g. “payment-service-3”), check Internal name — do not show on public-facing drafts so the status-page draft omits it. If you have a confirmed root cause, enter it and check Confirmed — but only check this box when the cause is definitely known, never earlier. Unconfirmed causes are treated as suspected and are handled appropriately in each draft.
The tool produces four drafts: a public status page, a customer email, an internal engineering note, and an executive summary. Each uses the same facts you entered, but written in the right register for its audience.
Click Copy on any draft and paste it into your status-page admin panel, email client, Slack, or briefing document. CommsCrisis drafts — a human sends. Nothing is transmitted from the page.
Frequently asked questions
No. All processing happens in your browser. The incident facts you enter are processed by JavaScript running on your device. Nothing is transmitted to any server, stored in any database, logged, or shared with any third party.
The page does not use localStorage, sessionStorage, or any other persistence mechanism. When you close or refresh the page, everything is gone. You can verify this yourself: the only network requests the page makes are to load its own HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and fonts — none of them carry incident data.
No. CommsCrisis is a drafting tool, not a communication platform. It does not send email, post to a status page, write to Slack, or trigger any webhook. There is no email server, API integration, or notification system connected to this product.
This is by design. A human must review every incident communication before it is issued, and the right channel varies by incident. Click Copy on the draft you need and paste it into the appropriate tool yourself.
No. CommsCrisis uses deterministic templating, not AI or a language model. The wording rules are finite, enumerable, and checked by tests. Every draft is built from the same set of sentence templates, chosen and filled based on the fields you completed and the options you selected.
This means the output is predictable and verifiable. The same input always produces the same drafts. There is no risk of the tool inventing facts, confabulating causes, or generating unexpected language — the risks associated with AI-generated incident communications.
Yes — they are your drafts. CommsCrisis produces a starting point. Every draft is meant to be reviewed, edited, and tailored by a human before it is published or sent. Click Copy to put the draft text on your clipboard, then paste it into your editor of choice and make whatever changes you need.
The product is designed so that the draft gives you the right structure, register, and safety defaults (hiding internal names, marking unconfirmed causes as suspected). You are expected to apply your judgment, add context you have that the form cannot capture, and adjust the tone to fit your specific situation.
No. CommsCrisis does not integrate with any external system. There are no API connections, webhooks, OAuth flows, or plugins. This is a deliberate constraint — the product routes no data to any third party, which means your incident details never leave your device.
If integration support is added in the future (a Planned Professional feature), each integration will be clearly documented and will require your explicit authorisation. No integration exists today.
No. CommsCrisis does not offer user accounts, logins, or profiles. Every visit starts fresh. Nothing is stored between visits — no incident history, no draft history, no saved settings.
Incident history and draft templates are Planned Professional features that would require an account system. Those features are not yet built. Until they are, treat CommsCrisis as a tool you open during an incident, draft your communications, copy them elsewhere, and close.
The drafts will never assert a cause you have not confirmed. If you leave the root cause field blank, all four drafts will say “We are investigating” or equivalent language — none will fabricate a cause. If you enter a suspected cause but leave the Confirmed checkbox unchecked, the drafts will present it as suspected, not settled.
This is one of the most important safety features in the product. The checkers verify that no draft ever states an unconfirmed cause as established fact. If you see a draft saying something you are not sure about, you either entered it as confirmed or you should report it as a bug.
The “What users actually experience” field has a similar safeguard: if you leave it blank, the drafts show a clearly marked gap ([Describe what users are experiencing]) rather than inventing impact language.
Yes, CommsCrisis is free today. The Free tier costs €0/month and covers everything the product currently does: all four draft types, all form fields, the internal-component toggle, confirmed-cause handling, and gap placeholders. No account, no credit card, no sign-up.
Professional is planned but not yet available. The planned features include incident history, saved draft templates, custom branding, PDF/Markdown export, and team workspaces, at €12/month. No payment is accepted today. The checkout demo on the pricing page is a demonstration only — no payment information is collected or processed by this site.
When a payment provider is connected and the Professional tier launches, an announcement will be made. Until then, the Free tier is all that exists, and it does everything the product offers.
Known limitations
CommsCrisis is an early product. The following limitations are known and honest:
- No email sending. CommsCrisis cannot send email. There is no email server configured for this domain. All drafts must be copied and pasted into your own communication tools.
- No external integrations. The product does not connect to any third-party service — no PagerDuty, Statuspage, Slack, Jira, or any other tool. There are no APIs, webhooks, or plugins.
- No incident history or persistence. Every page load starts fresh. You cannot save, revisit, or export a previous incident. If you refresh, your facts and drafts are gone.
- No accounts or logins. There is no way to create a profile, save preferences, or return to previous work. Team workspaces do not exist yet.
- No payment processing. The Professional tier and the checkout form on the pricing page are demonstrations. A subscription cannot actually be purchased today.
- No legal entity. The operator has not registered a company or supplied a jurisdiction. The terms of service and privacy policy reflect this openly.
- Single-incident, single-user. You can work on exactly one incident at a time. There is no multi-incident workspace, no collaboration, and no shared view of an incident log.
Contact us
Email support is not yet available. A contact method — along with a legal entity, a registered address, and a customer support mailbox — has not been established. This is recorded as an open requirement.
In the meantime, if you have a question not answered here, consider:
- Reviewing the home page for an overview of the product
- Trying the App directly — the form is self-explanatory and the drafts appear immediately
- Checking the Privacy and Terms pages for policy-level questions
We will update this page as soon as a contact method is established. The requirement is tracked in an internal needs list for the product owner.