What formats will it come in?

PDF and EPUB on Leanpub, and a Kindle ebook and a paperback on Amazon.

How much will it cost?

We will announce the price at launch. The free sample is out now, and you can read it without signing up.

Yes, within the license. The text and illustrations are CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: you can share the book unchanged, for noncommercial use, with credit. The code examples are MIT, so you can copy them into your own scripts and repositories.

Will the book get updates?

Corrections go into the next edition, and this page will list the errata.

Does it come with templates?

Yes. The templates the book describes, such as the service map, the incident runbook and an AGENTS.md starter, go into a free public DevOps Daily repository after launch. This page will link to it.

Cover of The DevOps Survival Guide: an open, well-worn travel case packed with a map, a pager, a mug, a first-aid kit, a wrench, a network cable, a lantern and a server

// books/devops-survival-guide

First edition, 2026

The DevOps Survival Guide

Name: The DevOps Survival Guide
Author: DevOps Daily

Practical DevOps in the Age of AI Agents

How to stay sane, ship fast, and sleep again.

For engineers doing DevOps work now that agents are part of the team. Each chapter opens with a short scenario, gives practical advice, and ends with next steps that fit in an ordinary week.

14 chaptersBy DevOps DailyEbook and paperback

Get it at launch Read a free sample

Free sample: the introduction and chapter 13, 29 pages (PDF, 1.5 MB).

// readers

Who it's for

Early in your career

The center is the first few years, roughly 0-3 years of experience. The scenarios follow a new hire, because a new hire sees what everyone else has stopped noticing.

Experienced engineers

You are usually the one who reviews agent changes, decides what an agent may touch and owns what it ships. Chapters 3, 7 and 13 are a good place to start.

Managers and team leads

Set the rules your team and its agents work under, and see what a newer colleague is dealing with and how to support them.

// contents

What's in the book

Chapters 1 to 14 each open with a short scenario and end with "Your Next Steps".

00
Introductionfree sample
Producing code got cheap. Reviewing it, running it, recovering it and explaining it did not.
01
You Just Got Here
You don't have to learn it all this week; start with one service and someone who can guide you.
02
DevOps Is Not a Job Title
What DevOps means and how that shapes the work you're joining.
03
The Deployment Mess
A boring deployment has repeatable steps and evidence that the new version works.
04
Infrastructure That Doesn't Hate You
Recording the intended setup while checking the system that's running.
05
Monitoring vs. Guessing
A green dashboard is only reassuring when you know what it covers and what it leaves out.
06
On-Call Without Trauma
From detecting trouble to responding without exhausting the people on call.
07
Security Is Your Job Too
I want the secure path to be the easy path.
08
No One Reads Your Docs
Keeping knowledge from getting trapped in people's heads.
09
Platform Thinking
Building tools that let teams help themselves.
10
Tech Debt, But Make It Boring
Making improvements without getting trapped in a rewrite.
11
Measuring What Actually Matters
Ask what decision a number supports and what evidence would challenge its apparent improvement.
12
Driving Change Without a Fancy Title
How to propose improvements when you don't have formal authority.
13
The Agent Has Production Accessfree sample
Agents that can write code, call tools, and sometimes touch production.
14
DevOps That Doesn't Burn You Out
A team has to stay healthy enough to make good decisions.
+
Work That Outlasts the Hypecareer
Which skills keep paying off whichever tools your team picks, and how to spend your next 90 days.

// at the back

Glossary: Short working definitions of terms you will hear in incidents, planning meetings and postmortems.
Further Reading: Where to check the book's positions and go deeper.
About This Book: Edition details, and how to report an error or send a question.

// free sample

Read the introduction and chapter 13

29 pages, including all of The Agent Has Production Access. PDF, 1.5 MB. No sign-up needed.

Read a free sample

// the people you'll meet

Meet the team

The scenarios follow one small company and the people you'll work with there.

Alex: Senior operations engineer, calm in a crisis.
Maya: Developer who automates anything she has to do twice.
Sam: Developer who ships fast and has opinions about it.
Nora: Database engineer who remembers the last rewrite.
Chris: Engineering manager, balancing delivery and reliability.
Eli: Follows the cloud bill until it has an owner.
The Agent: Fast, eager, confident, and sometimes wrong.
You: The new hire.

The new hire's first morning: she arrives with her bag while Alex, sitting on a desk with his mug, nods hello, Maya waves from her laptop, Sam and Chris talk by the window, Nora turns in her chair and Eli studies a wall screen; the Agent, a small robot with a visitor badge, rolls up holding out its clipboard — Introduction: the new hire's first morning.

The Agent proudly hands Maya a tall, wobbling stack of printed pages while the new hire pulls one page with a red band out of the middle — Chapter 13: the Agent hands Maya a very large change.

The new hire reads a printed manual and writes in her notebook while the Agent waits beside the desk with a draft on its clipboard — Chapter 13: the Agent waits with a draft while the new hire reads.

Six in the evening, in warm sunset light: Sam and Maya walk out chatting, Alex and Chris talk in the corridor where Nora and Eli are already heading off, the new hire looks back at the room as she switches off the light by the door, and in the corner the Agent sleeps on its charging dock — Chapter 14: six in the evening, and the Agent sleeps on its dock.

// faq

Questions

What formats will it come in?: PDF and EPUB on Leanpub, and a Kindle ebook and a paperback on Amazon.
How much will it cost?: We will announce the price at launch. The free sample is out now, and you can read it without signing up.
Can I share it?: Yes, within the license. The text and illustrations are CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: you can share the book unchanged, for noncommercial use, with credit. The code examples are MIT, so you can copy them into your own scripts and repositories.
Will the book get updates?: Corrections go into the next edition, and this page will list the errata.
Does it come with templates?: Yes. The templates the book describes, such as the service map, the incident runbook and an AGENTS.md starter, go into a free public DevOps Daily repository after launch. This page will link to it.

Free sample Notify me at launch