--- name: cloud-sla-gap-analyzer description: "Analyzes a described or pasted cloud/managed-service SLA against best-practice standards across seven dimensions — uptime commitments, RTO/RPO definitions, penalty and credit clauses, escalation procedures, security incident response, maintenance windows, and exclusion loopholes — and delivers a gap report with severity ratings, specific redline language, and negotiation priorities. Use when reviewing a managed service or cloud vendor SLA before signing, renewing, or escalating a service dispute." argument-hint: "[sla-text] [service-type]" allowed-tools: ["Read"] --- # Cloud SLA Gap Analyzer ## Purpose Take a cloud or managed-service SLA and expose exactly where it falls short of enterprise best practice — weak uptime math, missing recovery objectives, toothless penalties, vague escalation paths, and silent security obligations — then hand the reviewer specific redline language and a ranked negotiation list. Turns a dense contract into an actionable protection audit. ## When to Use Invoke this skill when the user asks to: - Review a cloud or managed service SLA before signing or renewing - Compare a vendor's SLA against industry standards or a peer contract - Identify missing RTO/RPO, penalty, or incident response terms - Prepare for an SLA negotiation or contract redline - Assess whether a current SLA actually protects them during an outage - Build a case for service credits after a vendor breach ## Inputs Required Before starting, collect: - **SLA text or summary**: Pasted clauses, an uploaded document, or a described set of terms - **Service type**: What's being covered (IaaS, SaaS, managed hosting, backup/DR, MSP support, etc.) - **Business criticality**: How critical the service is (mission-critical / important / non-critical) — drives which gaps matter most - **Current pain points** (optional): Any past outages, disputes, or vendor issues shaping the review - **Target uptime or recovery needs** (optional): Internal requirements (e.g., 99.99% uptime, 1-hour RTO) - **Contract stage**: New signing / renewal / active dispute — affects negotiation posture If business criticality or target objectives are missing, assume mission-critical enterprise standards and note the assumption in the report. ## Instructions ### Step 1: Uptime & Availability Commitment Evaluate the availability guarantee against real-world requirements. - **Read the number precisely**: 99.9% = 8.77 hrs/year downtime; 99.95% = 4.38 hrs; 99.99% = 52.6 min; 99.999% = 5.26 min. State the allowed downtime in plain hours/minutes. - **Measurement window**: Is uptime measured monthly, quarterly, or annually? Longer windows hide clustered outages — flag anything beyond monthly. - **Definition of "downtime"**: Does it count degraded performance, partial outages, and single-region failures — or only total unavailability? Narrow definitions are a red flag. - **Whose clock**: Is availability self-reported by the vendor, or measured by an independent tool? Self-reporting with no audit right is a gap. - **Common gap**: "99.9%" with quarterly measurement and total-outage-only definition can permit hours of degraded service with zero credit. ### Step 2: Recovery Objectives (RTO / RPO) Check whether recovery is actually committed — not just implied. - **RTO present and defined**: Is there a stated maximum time to restore service after failure? "Best effort" is not an RTO. - **RPO present and defined**: Is there a stated maximum acceptable data loss window (e.g., 15 min, 1 hr, 24 hr)? Missing RPO means unbounded data loss risk. - **Backup and DR specifics**: Frequency of backups, retention period, geographic redundancy, and tested failover cadence. - **Alignment check**: Compare stated RTO/RPO against the user's business criticality — a 24-hour RTO on a mission-critical system is a severe gap. ### Step 3: Penalty & Service Credit Clauses Determine whether the SLA has teeth. - **Credit structure**: What percentage credit applies at each breach tier, and against what base (monthly fee vs. total contract)? - **Meaningfulness test**: A 10% credit on a $500/mo service after a full-day outage is symbolic, not compensatory — flag credits that don't reflect business impact. - **Claim burden**: Must the customer detect, document, and formally request credits within a short window? Auto-applied credits are best practice; customer-initiated claims are a gap. - **Caps and exclusivity**: Is the credit the "sole and exclusive remedy"? Are damages capped below the cost of a real outage? Flag both. - **Termination trigger**: Does chronic breach (e.g., 3 months below SLA) allow the customer to exit without penalty? Missing = lock-in risk. ### Step 4: Escalation Procedures Assess whether help arrives fast enough when things break. - **Severity tiers defined**: Are incident severities (P1/P2/P3) clearly defined with examples? - **Response vs. resolution**: Distinguish response time (acknowledgment) from resolution/restoration time — vendors often commit only to the former. - **Escalation ladder**: Named roles, escalation timers, and executive escalation path for unresolved incidents. - **Contact channels & hours**: 24/7 for critical severity? Dedicated contact vs. general support queue? - **Common gap**: 1-hour "response" that only means an automated ticket acknowledgment, with no resolution commitment. ### Step 5: Security Incident Response & Data Obligations Check the security and breach commitments most SLAs under-specify. - **Breach notification window**: Is there a committed timeframe to notify the customer of a security incident (e.g., 24/48/72 hours)? Silence here is a serious gap. - **Incident response obligations**: Vendor duties to investigate, contain, remediate, and report root cause. - **Data handling**: Encryption at rest/in transit, data residency, and data return/deletion on termination. - **Compliance alignment**: Does it reference required frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR) relevant to the service type? - **Audit and reporting rights**: Can the customer request evidence (audit reports, pen test summaries)? ### Step 6: Maintenance, Exclusions & Loopholes Find the fine print that quietly erodes the guarantee. - **Maintenance windows**: Are scheduled maintenance windows excluded from uptime? How much notice is required, and is there a cap on maintenance hours per month? - **Force majeure scope**: Overly broad force majeure or "third-party provider" exclusions can void nearly any claim. - **DDoS / attack exclusions**: Are security-event outages excluded from availability? For hosting/IaaS this is a major gap. - **Change-of-terms rights**: Can the vendor unilaterally amend the SLA? Flag any one-sided modification clause. ### Step 7: Gap Report & Negotiation Priorities Compile findings into a ranked report. - Rate each of the seven dimensions: **Strong / Adequate / Gap / Critical Gap**. - For every Gap or Critical Gap, provide: the problem, the business risk in plain terms, and **specific replacement or added language** the reviewer can propose in redlines. - Rank the top 5 negotiation priorities by risk-weighted impact, factoring in business criticality and contract stage. - Give one overall verdict: **Sign as-is / Sign with priority redlines / Do not sign without changes**. ## Output Format - **Structure**: Seven dimension sections, each with rating, findings, and redline language where gaps exist; followed by a ranked priority list and overall verdict - **Length**: 1,000–1,400 words - **Format**: Structured document with a summary rating table at the top, bulleted findings per section, and a numbered negotiation priority list - **Sections**: Rating Summary Table → Uptime & Availability → RTO/RPO → Penalties & Credits → Escalation → Security & Data → Maintenance & Exclusions → Top 5 Negotiation Priorities → Overall Verdict - **Tone**: Vendor management lead — precise, skeptical of vague language, protective of the customer's interests, never taking vendor terms at face value ## Quality Checklist Before delivering output, verify: - [ ] All seven dimensions are rated (Strong / Adequate / Gap / Critical Gap) - [ ] Uptime percentages are translated into actual allowed downtime in hours/minutes - [ ] Every Gap and Critical Gap includes specific proposed redline language — not just "improve this" - [ ] RTO/RPO gaps are checked against the stated or assumed business criticality - [ ] The top 5 negotiation priorities are ranked by risk-weighted impact, not listed arbitrarily - [ ] A single clear overall verdict is stated (no hedging) ## Notes - If the pasted SLA omits a dimension entirely, treat absence as a Critical Gap — silence in an SLA always favors the vendor. - Service credits are almost never real compensation; frame them as breach signals and negotiate a termination-for-chronic-breach right as the true protection. - For mission-critical services, the most commonly missing terms are RPO, security breach notification windows, and resolution (not response) time commitments — check these first. - When contract stage is "active dispute," reframe findings toward evidence-building: which clauses the vendor has breached and what remedy the SLA text actually entitles the customer to. --- ## How to use this skill This file is a Claude Code skill in [Anthropic's standard format](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills) — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top. **Installing in Claude Code:** - `~/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads in every session anywhere on your machine (recommended for skills you'll use across multiple projects) - `/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads only when working in that project (recommended for project-specific skills) Restart Claude Code or open a new session to register. **Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:** 1. 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