What Belongs in an AI Video Incident Runbook?

Classify common generation incidents

Video generation can fail at the worst possible time: a campaign review is in an hour, a customer has scheduled a launch, and the queue starts slowing down. A useful runbook gives the team a shared response before that pressure arrives.

Start by classifying incidents according to their effect on customer work. The category should tell responders what to do next, who needs an update, and when a creative team should change plans.

• Single-job failures: A request returns an error, produces an unusable file, or remains stuck beyond the expected completion window.

• Queue delays: Jobs continue to complete, though wait times rise enough to threaten production schedules.

• Quality incidents: Output completes but has visible defects, missing elements, incorrect duration, or safety-review concerns.

• Provider-wide disruption: A model, storage layer, or upstream service prevents a meaningful share of jobs from finishing.

Define measurable thresholds for each category. For example, a job stalled for 15 minutes may trigger a retry, while a queue delay affecting a campaign deadline may trigger an incident lead and customer outreach. Teams make better decisions when “slow” has an agreed operational meaning.

Define ownership and escalation

Every incident needs one accountable person, even when several teams are investigating. Assign an incident lead to coordinate decisions, an engineering owner to investigate the technical path, and a customer communications owner to keep external updates accurate and timely.

Your runbook should identify the information responders collect first: job IDs, customer account, model used, submission time, current status, error details, and deadline. That record prevents support, engineering, and account teams from rebuilding the same timeline in separate threads.

Escalation paths should include upstream vendors and internal decision-makers. If your product uses Protoface as a hosted generation dependency, document the support route, the logs your team can provide, and the point at which a provider issue becomes customer-facing. Keep those details close to the operational documentation so responders do not hunt for them during an outage.

Set a review cadence for active incidents. A 15- or 30-minute checkpoint works well for deadline-sensitive events because it forces a clear choice: continue recovery, retry work, communicate a revised estimate, or move to a fallback.

Prepare customer-facing status updates

Customers need useful information early, especially when their own production teams are waiting on assets. A strong status update explains the impact, states what your team is doing, gives the next update time, and names the practical action the customer can take now.

Avoid speculative root-cause claims. Early updates can say that generation jobs are delayed, that the team is investigating, and that existing completed assets remain available. Once the issue is confirmed, share the affected workflow and recovery status in plain language.

Prepare templates for three moments: initial acknowledgement, ongoing progress, and resolution. Support teams can then respond consistently while engineering focuses on restoration. For high-value launches, pair the written update with a direct contact from the account or customer-success owner.

Include a deadline question in the first outreach: “What is the latest usable delivery time for this campaign?” That answer helps the incident lead prioritize jobs and decide when fallback production should begin.

Create fallback production options

Creative fallback plans protect deadlines when recovery time remains uncertain. Build them with the same care as your technical response, including approved assets, owners, export requirements, and the decision point for activating each option.

For example, a launch team may have video generation jobs stall shortly before a campaign deadline. The runbook can direct the team to switch to preapproved static assets, resize them for each placement, and publish the campaign on schedule while the video queue recovers. That is a deliberate production choice, not an improvised scramble.

• Maintain preapproved static images, product screenshots, and copy variants for priority campaigns.

• Keep a short list of previously approved video clips that can be recut or repurposed.

• Document which placements accept static creative and which require video delivery.

• Assign approval authority for activating fallback assets during an incident.

A complete runbook turns generation failures into manageable operating events. It gives customers timely answers, gives engineers a clean escalation path, and gives creative teams a usable plan when a deadline cannot wait for a queue to clear.