When does an AI agent use this pattern?

When the trigger described above matches the situation the agent is handling. The agent queries FusedFrames at runtime, this pattern is returned and the agent follows the recorded reasoning and steps to reach the recorded outcome.

How were the steps captured?

By the desktop app on the machine of someone who actually does this work. It records clicks, keystrokes, copy and paste, drag and drop, selected text and screen regions across PagerDuty, then groups them into the meaningful steps shown above.

Where does the reasoning come from?

From the operator. When the desktop app sees a decision the action alone cannot explain, it asks why in the moment. The operator's answer is recorded and becomes the reasoning attached to the pattern, so the AI agent gets the thinking and not just the steps.

What if my team handles this differently?

Capture how your team actually does it. The desktop app records what your operator does on your tools and the web app distills that into a pattern shaped by your team. Each team's library reflects their own approach rather than the example shown here.

What if a case looks like this pattern but does not quite fit?

The pattern is linked to 1 alternative. The agent can follow the connections shown on this page to a related pattern that matches the case more closely.

How does my AI agent actually call this pattern?

Through the read-only REST API or the npm CLI. Create an API key in the dashboard, choose whether it accesses all libraries or specific ones and have your agent query at runtime. The response is structured JSON ready for tool use.

Is the data shown on this page from a live customer?

No. Example libraries on this site are illustrative. Patterns in your own account are built from your team's captured actions and stay private to your workspace.

How do I build a pattern like this for my team?

Install the desktop app on the machine of the person who already does this work, ask them to handle a real case end to end, then distill the captured action into a pattern in the web app. The pattern you end up with mirrors how your team actually operates.

Escalating a page to the secondary on-call

When the primary on-call cannot start triage in the first few minutes, they reassign the PagerDuty incident to the genuine secondary on-call so a phone page is dispatched. A handover note on the timeline records the reason and the current state of investigation.

Tags

on-callpagerdutyescalationrotationhandover

Lets your agent filter to the right pattern

Categories and tags scope the retrieval set, so your agent receives only the patterns relevant to the task instead of scanning the full library.

What and why

The observed behaviour and the reasoning behind it.

Behaviour

When the on-call engineer cannot start triage within the first few minutes (already paged on a parallel incident, away from a workstation or judges the affected service to be outside their area), they open the PagerDuty schedule that covers the service to confirm who is genuinely on the secondary slot at the current time, then use Reassign rather than Add Responder so the secondary is paged with a phone call rather than a passive notification.

Reasoning

The default escalation policy moves the page to the secondary after 15 minutes of no response, but during a live incident those 15 minutes burn error budget. Manually reassigning sends an immediate phone page rather than a quiet notification, which is the difference between a 30 second handover and a 12 minute one. Checking the schedule matters because the listed secondary may have an active override (PTO, conference, holiday cover) and the override is what PagerDuty actually pages.

Gives your agent an operator's reasoning

Behaviour records the action; reasoning records the rationale. Your agent applies both to handle cases that diverge from the captured examples.

Cause and effect

What initiates this pattern and what it produces.

Trigger

The primary on-call has acknowledged a page but realises within the first few minutes that another responder needs to take the lead, either due to a parallel incident or because the affected service is outside their area of expertise.

Outcome

The PagerDuty incident is reassigned to the named secondary on-call, an immediate phone page is dispatched and the incident timeline carries a handover note explaining the reason and the current state of investigation.

Tells your agent when to act and what to verify

Your agent stays within the scope set by the trigger and outcome, so it doesn't extend beyond the work or finish before the outcome is met.

Standard operating procedure

Step-by-step instructions to reproduce this pattern.

PagerDuty

Click the Schedules tab and open the on-call schedule that covers the affected service.

The default secondary listed on the incident is the schedule's next position. If a teammate is on PTO or has a swap, the override is shown by a date strikethrough rather than a removed name on the rota. Always confirm at the schedule page rather than trusting the incident's escalation summary.

Expected: The schedule view shows the secondary on-call for the current shift with any overrides clearly marked.

PagerDuty

Return to the incident detail page and click Reassign.

Reassign delivers a phone page to the new responder. Add Responder only fires a notification, which is fine for awareness but does not wake anyone up. During an active incident always Reassign.

Expected: The reassignment dialog opens with a search field for the new responder.

PagerDuty

Search for the named secondary, select them from the results and click Reassign.

Type the colleague's full name. PagerDuty disambiguates between similar usernames and you do not want to page the wrong person at 2am.

Expected: The incident shows the new responder name and PagerDuty dispatches a phone call to their preferred number.

PagerDuty

Click 'Add Status Update' and post a one line handover summarising what you have already checked and what you have not.

Example: 'Reassigning to Priya. Acked but not started Datadog. Suspect recent api-gateway deploy.' This avoids the duplicated triage that wastes the first 4 minutes of every handover.

Expected: The timeline shows a status update with the handover note above the reassignment event.

Hands your agent your team's exact steps

Your agent executes the documented procedure in order, against the applications named at each step, producing consistent output across human and agent runs.

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Related patterns

How this pattern connects to other patterns in the library.

Often previous

Acknowledging a PagerDuty page

Alternative to

Acknowledging a PagerDuty page

Often next

Triaging a page from the linked Datadog monitor

Lets your agent confirm the match and its scope

Alternative patterns let your agent compare candidates and select the closest match. Previous and next patterns define position in the workflow, so the agent operates within the scope of this one.

Supporting actions

Actions that provide evidence for this pattern.

Reassigned PD-Q2HK77B to Priya, gave a 1-line handover

Escalated PD-PT5MN8L to secondary, on a parallel page

Handover on PD-Q9HK22N to Marco, billing-worker outside my area

Reassigned PD-PT4ZXKR after PTO override check on schedule

Shows your agent the evidence behind the pattern

Each pattern is derived from captured action sequences. Your agent can reference the source actions to verify any field, so nothing it acts on is authored by hand or hallucinated.

Metadata

Timestamps and identifiers.

Evidence	Observed 12 times across 4 connections
Applications	PagerDuty
First seen	4 Feb 2026, 19:48
Last seen	29 Apr 2026, 03:21

Helps your agent rank patterns by confidence

Action count and last-seen timestamp weight each pattern by frequency and recency, so your agent selects the highest-scoring match rather than the first returned.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

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