The Incident Challenge

<p>Hey Product Hunt!</p><p></p><p>I’m excited to share The Incident Challenge with you.</p><p></p><p>The idea started from something we kept seeing: AI can write code now. A lot of code.</p><p>But the moment production breaks, the hard part usually isn’t writing the fix.</p><p></p><p>It’s understanding what actually happened. Where to look. What to ignore. Which weird detail matters.<br></p><p>That’s the (human) skill we wanted to turn into a sport. So we built The Incident Challenge: a production debugging game for engineers.</p><p></p><p>You get dropped into a realistic broken system. What you get: </p><p>Logs, code, configs, docs, architecture diagrams, misleading symptoms, and a ticking clock.</p><p></p><p>Your job: Find the root cause. Fix it. Deploy the solution. Beat the leaderboard.</p><p></p><p>And yes, you can use AI agents.</p><p>But the challenge is designed so AI alone usually isn’t enough.</p><p>It might help you move faster, but you still need real engineering instincts to win.</p><p></p><p>The idea pretty much exploded on reddit, and today we have more than 300 devs participating.</p><p></p><p>Some people solve the same incident in minutes. Others take much longer.</p><p></p><p>That gap is exactly what makes it fun.</p><p></p><p>The challenge is live now, so feel free to give it spin, and maybe you might win!</p><p></p><p>Would genuinely love your feedback, ideas for future incidents, and brutal honesty on whether this feels like something engineers would want to play.</p><p></p><p>Come debug with us 🤘</p><p></p><p></p><img src="https://ph-files.imgix.net/25910c09-30ba-4029-b1e7-0c2d56c802bc.gif?auto=compress&amp;codec=mozjpeg&amp;cs=strip&amp;auto=format" style="max-width: 100%"><p></p>

<p>Finally, a coding challenge that actually mirrors real engineering. Writing code is the easy part; tracing a race condition through misleading docs is the real sport. Stoked to try this out and see if my instincts are as good as I think they are. Good Job 👏</p>

<p>Built this because debugging under pressure is a skill, and most engineers only practice it when prod is on fire.<br>I've sat in too many incidents where <strong>smart engineers froze</strong> - not because they lacked knowledge, but because they hadn't practiced navigating chaos under pressure.</p><p><br><strong>The Incident Challenge is a production incident CTF</strong> you can actually <strong>enjoy</strong>. Logs, architecture, code, docs, clues - we designed each one to feel like a real system that actually broke. Because it did. We based these on real patterns.</p><p></p><p>Bring AI, bring your terminal, bring whatever you want.<br>The system doesn't care how you solve it - just whether you can.<br><br>FIND THE 🪲</p>

<p>Realistic incident simulations sound like a fun way to actually practice being on call without ruining your day. Congrats on your launch!!</p>