> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.ilert.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.ilert.com/incidents-and-status-pages/incidents/incident-timeline-and-comments.md).

# Incident timeline and comments

The running record of an incident: what ilert logged, what your team wrote down, and what was said publicly.

The right-hand panel of the [incident view](/incidents-and-status-pages/incidents.md#the-incident-view) is the incident's memory. It has three tabs.

| Tab                | Holds                                                                                          |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Timeline**       | Everything that happened, logged automatically, plus your comments                             |
| **Status updates** | The public messages [posted from this incident](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-updates.md) |
| **Investigations** | What an AI agent found when set to work on the incident                                        |

## The timeline

The timeline is append-only, in chronological order, so someone joining an hour late can read down it and catch up. ilert writes to it by itself, recording at least:

* the incident being declared, and by whom,
* severity and status changes,
* responders added, paged, and joining,
* alerts linked and unlinked,
* an incident channel or conference bridge being attached,
* status updates being posted.

Nothing on it can be edited or deleted. That is the point: it is what a post-mortem is reconstructed from, and a record you can rewrite is not evidence.

## Comments

Comments are the parts the machine cannot know. Type into **Add comment to timeline** and send.

Worth writing down as you go, because nobody remembers it afterwards:

* what you found — "Connection pool exhausted on db-primary-1",
* what you decided and why — "Rolling back rather than hotfixing, the fix is unverified",
* what you handed over — the state of things when responsibility moves between people or regions.

{% hint style="info" %}
A comment is also posted into the incident's [chat channel](/incidents-and-status-pages/incidents/incident-channels.md) as a threaded reply, so people watching there see it without switching. It does not work the other way round: messages sent in the channel stay in the channel and never appear on the timeline.
{% endhint %}

## Saying something publicly

The timeline is internal — all of it, always. Customers see nothing from it.

To communicate, click **Post status update**. A [status update](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-updates.md) is a separate, deliberately written, public message that goes to your [status pages](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-pages.md) and subscribers. The incident's title, summary, severity, and timeline are not part of it, and never leak into it.

The timeline records that you posted one, and the **Status updates** tab keeps what you said. See [Status updates](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-updates.md) for writing and resolving them.


---

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