> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.rootly.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Building AI Templates > Add Rootly AI blocks to a retrospective template and preview the output against a past incident before rollout. ## AI Blocks Start in the Template The fastest way to get Rootly AI-generated retrospectives is to add AI blocks to a **template**. Every retrospective created from that template generates those sections automatically. The quickest start of all is a **[starter template](#start-from-a-starter-template)**, a ready-made, Rootly AI-powered template you can adopt in one click. You can also drop AI blocks into an individual document on the fly (see [Using AI Blocks](/ai/ai-in-retrospectives/using-ai-blocks)), but templates are where you set the standard for the whole team. For how templates work in general, including formats, Liquid, data blocks, and defaults, see [Configuring Templates](/retrospectives/configuring-templates). *** ## Start From a Starter Template Rootly ships four starter templates. **Best Practice** is pinned first with a recommendation badge — it's the one Rootly stands behind: | Starter template | Best for | The shape of it | | :- | :- | :- | | **[Best Practice](/retrospectives/best-practice-template)** (recommended) | The default for most incidents — Rootly's opinionated take on a good retrospective | What Happened, Impact, Contributing Factors, Learnings, and Follow-Up Actions AI blocks, a pre-filled Key Information table, and the timeline as an appendix. Ships with a blameless instruction set in Instructions for Rootly AI. | | **Major Incident** | High-severity, leadership-visible incidents | Prioritizes completeness and causal depth over brevity — separates trigger, root cause, and contributing factors with evidence and timestamps | | **Customer RCA** | A formal, blameless RCA you can share externally | Free of internal jargon, code names, and individual names; frames the resolution around the safeguards now in place | | **Security Incident** | Security-focused reviews | Leads with detection, scopes the exposure, and treats containment and remediation as distinct phases | The **Standard Incident** starter was replaced by Best Practice. Organizations that already created a template from it keep it — it only left the offered list. You can adopt a starter from two places: * On the **Retrospectives → Document Templates** page, click **Try template** on a starter to open the builder preloaded with it. Nothing is created until you save. * Already in the builder? Open the **AI Library** tab in the sidebar and click a starter to insert its content. An empty document is seeded with it; a document that already has content gets the starter appended. Each insert gets fresh blocks, so you can insert more than one without collisions. *** ## Open the Template Builder To build a template from scratch: In Rootly, go to **Retrospectives → Document Templates**. Click **New Template** for a blank document, or **Try template** on a starter to begin from a ready-made one (see above). Open the **AI Library** sidebar for starter templates and the AI Blocks palette. *** ## Add AI Blocks From the Palette To add an AI block: * **Drag** it from the palette into the position you want in the document, or * Click into the document, type `/`, and pick it from the slash menu. *** ## The Preset Blocks Rootly ships ten preset AI blocks. | Block | What it drafts | | :- | :- | | **Summary** | A concise overview for stakeholders: what happened and how it was resolved. | | **Impact** | Who and what was affected: customers, services, scope, and duration. | | **What Happened** | The incident's story from the responders' perspective, including wrong first theories and dead ends. | | **Contributing Factors** | The conditions that had to be true for the incident to happen — explicitly plural, replacing single-root-cause framing. | | **Learnings** | Draft lessons for the team to confirm: what went well, what was learned, and hidden assumptions exposed. | | **Follow-Up Actions** | Suggested follow-up actions for the team to review, own, and date. | | **Root Cause** | Pinpoints why the incident happened. For new templates, prefer **Contributing Factors** — it keeps the analysis plural and blame-free. | | **Mitigation** | The immediate steps taken to reduce or stop the impact. | | **Resolution** | How the incident was fully resolved. | | **Curated Timeline** | A readable timeline of the key moments as a table. This is different from the raw **Timeline** data block, which lists every event; the Curated Timeline summarizes the story. | *** ## Custom AI Blocks When none of the presets fit, add a **Custom AI block**: Add it from the palette or the slash menu. The title becomes the section heading. Describe what you want this section to contain in plain language, for example, *"Summarize the customer communications sent during the incident and whether they went out on time."* Rootly AI drafts that section from the same incident context as the presets. *** ## Steer Generation With Instructions You don't have to accept the preset prompts as-is. You can layer your own guidance on top: * **Per-block custom instructions.** Add instructions to any preset block to put your own spin on it, for example, *"Write Impact in customer-minutes-lost"* or *"Keep Root Cause to three sentences and name the failing service."* The instruction is saved on the template and applied every time that block generates. * **Template-level general instructions.** Set instructions that apply to **every** AI block in the template, like audience and house style, so all your retrospectives read consistently. The [Best Practice starter](/retrospectives/best-practice-template) ships with these pre-set to Rootly's blameless generation rules — grounding in actual events, confirmed versus suspected, and roles rather than names — so you can start from a template whose opinion is already encoded. *** ## Preview Against a Past Incident Before you roll a template out, preview it against a **real past incident** to see exactly what each AI block would produce with that incident's data. In the builder, choose **Preview**, select a past incident, and iterate until the output reads the way you want. *** ## Publish When the template looks right, save and publish it. To control which incidents get which template (by severity, team, or incident type), see [Configuring Templates](/retrospectives/configuring-templates). *** ## Related Pages What AI blocks are and how they draft your retrospective. Insert, generate, edit, and regenerate AI blocks inside a retrospective document. How retrospective templates work. This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.