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name: escalate-or-hold description: "Decide whether an issue gets escalated now, held with a re-check time, or closed — as a typed decision with probabilities rather than a judgment call in a thread. Use when asked should I escalate this, is this a P1, do we page someone, hold or escalate, or when an on-call, support lead or PM is staring at an issue and unsure. Produces the issue state in a fixed schema, the three-way decision with probabilities and confidence, the act-or-hold verdict, and the re-check time when holding." version: 1.0.0

Escalate or Hold

Most escalation mistakes are timing mistakes: too late because nobody wanted to be the one who paged, or too early because the reporter shouted. This skill fixes the shape of the decision — six state fields, three defined options, a probability for each — so the call is made on impact and trend rather than on volume.

Where this sits

Before cs-escalation-brief (which writes the brief once you have decided to escalate) and alongside escalation-tree (which says to whom). This one says whether, and when.

What This Skill Produces

• The issue state — six fields, filled from evidence
• The decision — escalate / hold / close with probabilities and confidence
• Act or hold — thresholds applied, verdict stated
• The re-check time — when holding, a hard time (hours, not days) and what would trigger escalation before it
• The reporter line — one sentence to send the person who raised it

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• issue — what happened, when first reported, current status
• impact — customers or revenue affected, SLA state, any regulatory or safety angle
• owner — who has it, their capacity, when they last updated
• trend — worse, stable, or improving, with the evidence
• prior_escalations — escalated before? what happened
• asks — what the reporter is asking for

Framework: A Typed Decision

Option	It applies when
escalate	Impact is growing, or a commitment / SLA / safety line is crossed, and the current owner cannot fix it in time — bring in the next level now
hold	Impact is bounded, the owner has a credible plan and a next update time — hold and re-check at that time
close	Resolved, a duplicate, or impact was misjudged — close with a note to the reporter

Thresholds. Act when confidence ≥ 0.6 and the winning option's probability ≥ 0.7. When escalate and hold are close, hold with a hard re-check time and tell the reporter the time — a close call resolved by a clock beats a close call resolved by a mood.

Trend beats severity. A bounded sev-2 that is getting worse is closer to escalation than a static sev-1 with a tested fix landing in an hour.

Getting probabilities. Any calibrated decision model that returns a probability per defined option serves this contract; the repo ships an adapter (node integrations/jev/decide.mjs escalate-or-hold --state state.json, contract in integrations/jev/decisions/). Without one, the assistant estimates and labels the estimate.

Output Format

Escalate or hold: [issue] · first reported [time]

State

Field	Value
impact	…
owner	…
trend	…
prior_escalations	…
asks	…

Decision

Option	Probability
escalate	0.xx
hold	0.xx
close	0.xx

Confidence: 0.xx · Source: [model / estimate]

Verdict: [act: option] or [hold — re-check at HH:MM; escalate before that if: …] Reporter line: "[one sentence: what is happening and when they will hear next]"

Quality Checks

• Trend is stated with evidence, not assumed from severity
• All three probabilities shown; the verdict cites the thresholds
• A hold has a re-check time in hours and a named early trigger
• The reporter gets one sentence with a time in it
• Safety or regulatory angles, if present, are stated explicitly and force escalate

Anti-Patterns

• Escalating the loudest reporter rather than the largest impact
• Holding without a clock — "let's see how it goes" is not a hold, it is a drift
• Closing to reduce the queue when impact was never verified
• Re-litigating the options — inventing "soft escalate" to avoid paging someone
• Skipping the reporter line — silence is how holds turn into escalations from above

Example Trigger Phrases

• "Should I escalate this or wait for the owner's fix?"
• "Is this a page-someone situation?"
• "Third ticket on this today — hold or escalate?"