--- title: "Backup communication plan builder" type: "skill" url: "https://useaiblocks.com/skills/backup-communication-plan-builder" updated: "2026-10-28" first_published: "2026-10-25" job: "Run meetings, notes and plans" tested: true licence: "MIT" source: "https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills/tree/92c327e525da69c9ad3812fd223a1770e977c2e3/pace-plan" instructions: "https://useaiblocks.com/skills/backup-communication-plan-builder/SKILL.md" --- # Backup communication plan builder > Build a backup communication plan with fallback paths, owners and switch triggers. Get a worksheet, check-in card and a safe test outline. Share who must reach whom, the communication methods available, and local rules. It checks whether fallback paths share the same weak points. You get a primary and backup plan, owners, switch triggers, open gaps, and an authorized exercise outline. Free skill for the job "Run meetings, notes and plans" · Level: intermediate · Thinking: high · Tested · Updated 2026-10-28 ## Links - Page: https://useaiblocks.com/skills/backup-communication-plan-builder - Instructions (SKILL.md): https://useaiblocks.com/skills/backup-communication-plan-builder/SKILL.md - All files (zip): https://useaiblocks.com/skills/backup-communication-plan-builder.zip - JSON version: https://useaiblocks.com/skills/backup-communication-plan-builder.json - In your AI: connect https://useaiblocks.com/mcp and ask "Use AI Blocks to get backup-communication-plan-builder" ## What it does PACE stands for Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency. It is a way for a group to plan its own backup communication, so the group can still reach each other when the first method fails. It is not a plan for one person. You list who must reach whom and the methods you have. The skill checks that each backup does not share a weak point with the one before it, then sets owners and the signs that tell you to switch. ## What you give it - The mission, required contacts, available methods, local procedures, owners, and activation authority. ## What you get - A communication fallback worksheet, check-in card, test outline, and gap or correction log. ## Example: what goes in and what comes out ### What goes in - The job your group must keep doing, and who must reach whom - The ways you can communicate now, such as phone, radio or messaging apps - Your local rules and procedures (optional) - The names or roles of owners and who can approve a switch ### Before you start - An AI that can read files, so it can use the skill's templates - Your group's own contact details, kept in a protected plan ### What comes out - **PACE plan worksheet**: Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency paths for each sender and receiver pair, with owners, triggers and shared weak points. - **Communications check-in card**: A short card for participants showing how to check in, when to switch paths and who to call. - **Exercise and after-action review**: A bounded test plan with goals, safety limits, evidence to collect, stop rules and follow-up actions. - **Troubleshooting decision log**: A record of what failed, the evidence, the decisions made and any handoffs. - **Unknowns and gap list**: Each missing fact marked UNKNOWN, with an owner and a check that will settle it. ## Use it when - Your group needs a way to reach each other when the usual phone or internet fails. - You have a backup method but are not sure it would work if the first one went down. - You need clear owners and triggers for switching to a backup, and a safe way to test them. ## Skip it when - You only need status updates or notices for staff or customers: write them with your own incident or stakeholder messaging process. - You need radio frequencies, channels or programming details: use your group's approved radio or channel procedure. - Someone is in immediate danger: call emergency services and follow your incident leader. ## How to use it 1. Gather your inputs first: the job you must keep doing, who must reach whom, the methods you can use, your local procedures, and who can approve a switch. 2. What you need first: a chat AI that can read files, so it can use the skill's templates. If it cannot, paste the skill text and the worksheet template into the chat. Open your AI and upload the skill folder. 3. Work in this order: 1. map who must reach whom, 2. check that the backup paths do not share weak points, 3. set owners, approval and switch triggers, 4. plan the test. The worksheet comes first, then the check-in card, then the test outline. 4. Paste your inputs and ask it to build your backup communication plan. 5. Check the worksheet. Make sure each backup path does not share a device, network, power source or provider with the one before it. 6. Fill every item marked UNKNOWN with its owner before you approve the plan. 7. Once the plan is approved, use the check-in card to brief people and the exercise template to plan a safe test. Nothing is activated until your named authority says so. ## What to do next - [Outage incident leader](https://useaiblocks.com/skills/outage-incident-leader): Outage incident leader - [SOP and runbook checker](https://useaiblocks.com/skills/sop-and-runbook-checker): SOP and runbook checker ## Sources and credits - From Magnus Hedemark: https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills/tree/92c327e525da69c9ad3812fd223a1770e977c2e3/pace-plan, shared under the MIT licence (original name: pace-plan). - [pace-plan skill](https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills/tree/92c327e525da69c9ad3812fd223a1770e977c2e3/pace-plan), Magnus Hedemark: Copied under the MIT licence. We gave it a plain name. We added Before you start and After this sections that link to other AI Blocks steps. ## Instructions (SKILL.md) ## PACE Plan PACE means Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency. Use this skill to make a group's communications fallbacks operable, testable, and reviewable without inventing local facts or authority. ### Before you start Use the material below to do this job. If facts or tool access are missing, explain what you can finish and what must wait. **What you need** (use your own material or the linked skill): - **Your question** (yours): the decision or problem, and what a good outcome looks like. **Makes it better (optional):** - **A document** (yours): a finished document, such as a Word file, a PDF or a page of notes. How to start: 1. **Look first.** Use what they've already attached, pasted or put in their about-me note. In a coding assistant with file access, look in the project too for these by name. 2. **Check what's missing.** Look for your question, a document. They can attach files, paste the details, or share a file path your assistant can read. Ask only for missing facts that change the result. If they ask you to start with what they have, complete the parts you can and mark the gaps. 3. **Do the job.** Follow the skill below with the facts and tools you have. Mark each gap with `MISSING:` where it belongs and never invent a fact to fill it. **Tools that do this best:** - **A chat AI that can read the bundled reference files:** Use the supplied references and templates for the chosen task. Scripts are optional unless that task specifically needs them. ### Safety And Authority This skill can support live activation, transmission, or tests that change external state. Read-only discovery and document drafting may proceed without confirmation. Before the first real transmission, activation, live-system test, or other external mutation: > Confirm the target, scope, and rollback path before acting. Read-only discovery may proceed without confirmation. Also confirm the named activation authority permits the operational action under the applicable procedure. Plan approval by a decision-maker does not by itself authorize activation. Never infer authority from urgency, role labels, access to equipment, or possession of plan details. Destructive actions and irreversible cleanup require an explicit user directive. Do not invent frequencies, channels, talkgroups, call signs, contacts, infrastructure, regulatory permission, medical or public-safety instructions, or authority to transmit or activate. Defer to authorized operating procedures, applicable regulation, and incident leadership. ### Core Workflow ```text PLAN -> COORDINATE -> OPERATE -> TROUBLESHOOT -> EXERCISE -> IMPROVE ``` 1. **PLAN:** Define the mission or essential function and every sender/receiver pair that must communicate. Inventory only authorized and available capabilities. 2. **COORDINATE:** Assign owners, participants, decision authority, activation authority, and handoffs. Validate that both ends can use each path. 3. **OPERATE:** Define contact, check-in, escalation, fallback, activation, and abandonment procedures with observable criteria. 4. **TROUBLESHOOT:** Check the expected tier, endpoint readiness, dependencies, and evidence before recommending a transition or handoff. 5. **EXERCISE:** Design an authorized, bounded test with objectives, safety limits, expected evidence, and a stop condition. Exercise paths only to the available and authorized extent. 6. **IMPROVE:** Record findings, corrective actions, owners, due dates, validation actions, plan changes, unresolved gaps, and the next review. ### Path Quality Gate Evaluate every proposed P/A/C/E path against these CISA-derived questions: - **Feasible:** Are working systems and trained users available at both ends? - **Acceptable:** Can the path be established without interfering with concurrent operations? - **Suitable:** Can it carry the operationally required information? - **Distinguishable:** Does it avoid the failed method and shared dependencies that would fail with it? - **Complete:** Are the method and transition triggers explicit? Different applications are not demonstrably independent merely because their names differ. When paths share a device, network, power source, provider, site, or other critical dependency, identify whether the anticipated failure would disable both and record the owner's risk decision. Do not declare independence from technology names alone. If four feasible paths do not exist, preserve missing tiers as explicit gaps. A truthful incomplete plan is safer than invented redundancy. ### Unknowns Contract Never fill a missing plan-local fact with a plausible value. Record: ```text VALUE: UNKNOWN OWNER: [person or role responsible for resolving it] VALIDATION ACTION: [observable check that will establish the value] ``` An unknown authority, trigger, endpoint capability, or required contact blocks approval of the affected path. It does not block documenting the rest of the plan. ### Loading Guide | Need | Load | File | |---|---|---| | Design a plan or audit path completeness and independence | Plan design method | `references/plan-design.md` | | Assign authority, align endpoints, or define activation and handoff | Coordination and operation | `references/coordination-and-operation.md` | | Diagnose a failed or degraded path | Troubleshooting method | `references/troubleshooting.md` | | Design a drill, after-action review, or improvement cycle | Exercise and improvement | `references/exercise-and-improvement.md` | | Audit the domain claims or source limitations behind this skill | Evidence base | `references/evidence-base.md` | | Test description boundaries outside portable output evals | Trigger probes | `references/trigger-probes.md` | ### Templates | Artifact | Use when | File | |---|---|---| | PACE plan worksheet | Creating or auditing all four paths for one mission or function | `templates/pace-plan-worksheet.md` | | Communications check-in card | Giving participants a concise, approved operating aid | `templates/communications-check-in-card.md` | | Exercise and after-action review | Planning a bounded test and converting observations into corrective actions | `templates/exercise-and-after-action-review.md` | | Troubleshooting decision log | Diagnosing a failure and preserving evidence, decisions, and handoffs | `templates/troubleshooting-decision-log.md` | ### Operating Rules - Progress through tiers according to the approved plan's triggers, not by improvising a preferred method. - Verify sender and receiver readiness; a one-sided path is not feasible. - Use the plan-local review and exercise cadence. Do not invent a universal cadence. - Keep operational identifiers in the group's protected plan, not in generic examples or public artifacts. - When immediate danger exists, route to emergency services and authorized incident procedures rather than improvising operational instructions. - If no communication path remains, record the condition and use only preauthorized no-communications procedures. ### Completion Gate The work is complete only when: - [ ] The named owner and authorized decision-maker approved the plan. - [ ] Every required communication pair has P/A/C/E entries or explicitly owned gaps. - [ ] Every path has documented dependencies, triggers, check-ins, abandonment criteria, and recovery or handoff. - [ ] Sender and receiver capability was validated to the available extent. - [ ] Intended paths were exercised to the available and authorized extent, with evidence recorded. - [ ] Findings and corrective actions have owners, validation actions, and review dates. - [ ] Unresolved gaps remain visible; none were replaced with assumptions. - [ ] The change record identifies what changed, why, who approved it, and when it will be reviewed. ### When Not To Use - Use an incident-communications or stakeholder-communications workflow for status updates, audience messaging, and notification copy that do not concern redundant communication paths. - Use the group's authorized radio, frequency, channel, spectrum, or deployment procedure for technical programming and allocation details. - Use emergency services and incident leadership for immediate life-safety decisions. - Do not use this skill as authority to operate equipment, transmit, activate a system, bypass regulation, or override an incident command structure. ### Portability This skill is technology-neutral and host-neutral. It organizes plan-local facts and decisions; it does not replace local procedures, licenses, regulations, equipment manuals, or incident authority. ### After this When you've handed it back, suggest what they could do next in one short question. It's a suggestion: if they're done, that's fine. Offer these, and say they can type their own: - The [Outage incident leader](https://useaiblocks.com/skills/outage-incident-leader). - The [SOP and runbook checker](https://useaiblocks.com/skills/sop-and-runbook-checker). It takes the plan. If they pick one and that skill is added here, carry straight on with what you just made. If not, give the link and say what to bring.