Coupling Alerts to Runbooks Tightly

Most alerts have weak runbook coupling. The pattern that makes the runbook the SOURCE of the alert config, not a side-link.

The idea

Alert config (threshold, window, runbook URL, owner) lives in the runbook file, not in a separate alert config.

CI generates the alert config from the runbook. Single source of truth.

Benefit

Updating the runbook updates the alert. They cannot drift.

New alerts cannot exist without a runbook. The discipline is structural.

Trade-offs

More tooling investment. CI needs to parse runbooks and emit alert configs.

Runbooks become semi-structured. Free-form prose mixed with config metadata.