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How the Incident Title Generator Works

Rootly can automatically generate a unique title for an incident when you leave the Title field blank. The generator creates a memorable two-word phrase by combining:
  • An adjective
  • A noun
Both words come from your organization’s configurable word banks. This ensures that every incident—manual or automated—has a distinct title, even if responders forget to provide one. Users may edit the title at any time during the incident lifecycle.
If a user does not enter a title, Rootly automatically assigns one using the team’s configured adjective and noun lists.

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Title Generation Logic

When Rootly generates a title:
  1. It collects adjectives and nouns used in incident titles within the last year.
  2. These recently used words are added to an exclusion list to reduce repeats.
  3. Rootly selects a random adjective and noun from your team’s configured word banks.
  4. The result is titleized (for example, "sleepy server" → "Sleepy Server").
  5. The incident is marked with title_autogenerated = true.
This logic applies to:
  • Incidents created in the Web UI
  • Incidents created via Slack
  • Incidents created via the API
API-created incidents also auto-generate titles if the payload omits the title.
The API response includes title_autogenerated so automation can detect system-generated titles.

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Configuring the Word Banks

Admins may customize the adjective and noun lists used for generation. You can update these from: Organization Settings → Show Advanced Settings → Incident Title Generator Configuration options include:
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list
List of allowed adjectives.
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list
List of allowed nouns.
Exclusion logic is automatic (based on 1 year of past incidents).
Customizing your word banks allows incident names to better reflect your organization’s culture, domains, and terminology.

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Optional: AI-Generated Titles

With Rootly AI opted in, responders can replace a generated title with an AI-written one: run /rootly update in the incident channel and click Generate with AI. Rootly AI reads the incident’s summary, alerts, and early timeline to produce the title. See AI Summaries.

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Titles in External Integrations

When exporting incidents to tools like PagerDuty or Opsgenie:
  • If the title was auto-generated, Rootly may prefer using the summary as the outbound title.
  • Rootly prepends the severity to outbound titles when appropriate.
Example: [SEV2] Database Latency Degradation This ensures external systems receive clear, actionable titles.

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Best Practices

  • Let Rootly auto-generate titles when responders are busy—clean-up can happen later.
  • Customize your adjective/noun lists to improve clarity and team culture.
  • Use AI generation for complex or ambiguous incidents.
  • Edit titles manually once the incident scope is understood.
  • Avoid relying solely on the title for operational details—pair it with a strong summary.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Titles can be edited at any point during the incident lifecycle.
Rootly excludes adjectives and nouns used in the past year to reduce duplication.
Yes. If title is omitted, Rootly generates one automatically and marks it as auto-generated (title_autogenerated: true).
Not currently. Titles always follow the adjective + noun format unless manually edited or overwritten by AI.
External integrations may use the summary instead when the title is autogenerated. Severity may also be prefixed automatically.

Incident Lifecycle

Where auto-generated titles fit in the incident creation flow.

Incidents Overview

The umbrella page covering how incidents work end-to-end.

Workflows Overview

Regenerate or override titles later in the incident lifecycle via workflow actions.