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Stew: Runbook Automation for On-Call Engineers

· 3 min read · Stew Team
announcementrunbook automationdevopsSRE

If you’ve ever been paged at 2am and spent precious minutes hunting through a wiki for the right commands, you know the problem: runbooks are supposed to help, but most of them are outdated, incomplete, or just wrong.

We built Stew to fix that. Stew is a runbook automation tool that turns your Markdown documentation into executable playbooks you can actually trust.

Why We Built a Runbook Automation Tool

Every SRE and DevOps team has runbooks. They live in Confluence, Notion, GitHub wikis, or random Google Docs. The problem isn’t that runbooks don’t exist—it’s that they rot.

Here’s what happens:

  • Someone writes a runbook after an incident
  • The infrastructure changes, but the runbook doesn’t
  • Six months later, the commands reference deprecated APIs
  • During the next incident, you’re copy-pasting commands that no longer work

Traditional runbook automation tools try to solve this with complex workflow engines, YAML configs, and heavyweight platforms. But most teams don’t need an enterprise platform—they need their existing docs to actually work.

How Stew Works

Stew takes a different approach. Instead of replacing your documentation, we make it executable.

Write your runbook in Markdown:

# Restart API Service

First, check the current pod status:

​```bash
kubectl get pods -n production -l app=api
​```

If pods are unhealthy, restart the deployment:

​```bash
kubectl rollout restart deployment/api -n production
​```

With Stew, you can run each code block directly—in your terminal, over SSH to a remote server, or in a web interface your whole team can access.

Key Features of Stew

Executable Markdown

Your runbooks stay as plain Markdown files. No proprietary formats, no lock-in. Store them in Git alongside your code, review changes in PRs, and deploy them with your infrastructure.

Works Everywhere

Stew runs in your terminal, over SSH to bastion hosts, and in the browser. No matter where you are when you get paged, you can execute your runbooks.

Team Collaboration

Share runbooks with your team through a web interface. New engineers can execute proven playbooks without needing deep system knowledge on day one.

Environment Persistence

Variables and environment state persist across cells. Set a variable in one step, use it in the next—just like a real terminal session.

Who Is Stew For?

Stew is built for:

  • SRE teams who maintain incident response runbooks
  • Platform engineers who document infrastructure procedures
  • DevOps teams who need to share operational knowledge
  • On-call engineers who need reliable playbooks at 2am

If you’re tired of being the “human runbook” that everyone Slacks when something breaks, Stew helps you capture that knowledge in a format your whole team can use.

Runbook Automation Without the Complexity

Most runbook automation tools require you to learn new DSLs, configure complex workflows, or deploy heavyweight platforms. Stew is different:

  • Single binary — no Docker, no Kubernetes, no dependencies
  • Markdown-native — use the docs you already have
  • Git-friendly — version control your runbooks like code
  • SSH-first — works in air-gapped networks and bastion hosts

Get Early Access

We’re currently in private beta, working with SRE teams to refine the experience.

If you’re looking for a runbook automation tool that actually fits how your team works, join our waitlist to get early access.

Stop copy-pasting from stale wikis. Start running runbooks that work.