Readme outage history

We're currently investigating an issue causing elevated 503 errors and timeouts when loading documentation pages.

We are continuing to investigate this issue.

The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.

A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.

This incident has been resolved.

We are currently investigating why pages are showing 404

We have identified the issue and are working on a fix

The fix has been deployed and we're currently deploying the operational servers. There may be some cached 404s, so please let support know if you are still running into issues

Projects should be showing again. Please contact [email protected] if you are still running into any 404 errors.

We're currently investigating elevated latency and slow response times affecting hubs. Actively working to identify the root cause and restore normal service.

A fix has been implemented and we're currently monitoring the results. Performance should be returning to normal.

We've identified additional contributing factors and are actively working to fix them.

We are continuing to monitor for any further issues.

This incident has been resolved.

Our Admin interface is experiencing an outage. The ability of end-users to visit your ReadMe developer hub is unaffected.

We were able to resolve the situation. There may be some intermittent sluggishness for the next few minutes.

This incident has been resolved.

We are currently experiencing slow search results across customer hubs

We have re-indexed the search and performance has improved. Please e-mail [email protected] if you're still seeing issues with search

Experiencing degraded performance due to third-party infrastructure issues. We are monitoring this situation and working to maintain stability on our end.

This incident has been resolved.

We are currently investigating an incident related to API Reference pages.

This incident was resolved and normal site function has been resolved

We're actively investigating this issue.

The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.

Systems are getting back up. We're continuing to work on a permanent fix for this issue.

A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.

We are continuing to monitor for any further issues.

We are receiving reports of degraded performance and are actively investigating. We will provide updates as more information becomes available.

Systems appear stable and we are actively rolling out a series of fixes. We will continue to monitor and provide updates

Systems remain stable. Improvements and fixes have been rolled out and we are continuing to monitor.

Systems remain stable, and we are continuing to monitor the situation. Bi-directional sync was on a maintenance job from 9:50 - 11:59 AM (ET) and is now operational.

Systems remain stable and our team continues to deploy targeted fixes. Work is ongoing to address degraded read performance across the system, including serving all 404s from cache. We’ll be actively monitoring over the weekend, and we will provide a full RCA next week.

Our systems have been stable since Friday, May 29th. We're monitoring closely and improving spike detection to prevent recurrence and adding proactive capacity monitoring to detect admin dashboard degradation before it impacts customers. Full root cause analysis coming soon. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

We are currently investigating this issue.

The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.

We're slowly recovering and monitoring the situation.

We are monitoring the issue.

Updated 6/3: A routine configuration update coincided with the downtime window, which led us to initially identify it as the cause. Further investigation confirmed the two were unrelated. See the postmortem for full details.

We are seeing some slow performance, possibly 500 errors. investigating

We are continuing to investigate this issue.

Performance has improved, but we're still investigating the issue.

Performance and loading is still being affected, and we're in the process of rolling out fixes

This incident has been resolved.

### What Happened Beginning Tuesday, May 26, 2026, customers were experiencing slow loading and 503 errors across ReadMe-hosted docs and the admin dashboard. The outage was intermittent but recurring, with the worst periods hitting during business hours when traffic spiked. ### Root Cause An internal data backup process was generating excessive I/O on our storage layer. Under normal traffic conditions, this additional load was manageable. But when it coincided with peak customer traffic and elevated bot activity, total I/O demand exceeded system capacity, causing cascading request timeouts. The maintenance process ran on a recurring schedule, which is why the degradation followed a predictable pattern of spikes throughout each day. Separately, a surge in bot traffic to non-existent pages \(404s\) amplified the problem because those requests were not being served from cache. ### Resolution **Immediate fix:** We identified and disabled the maintenance process causing the excess I/O load. Within three hours, storage utilization returned to normal levels and remained stable. **Additional improvements shipped during the incident:** * Expanded caching across multiple layers, significantly reducing load on backend storage * Hardened 404 handling to serve error pages from cache instead of hitting the backend * Implemented rate limiting and IP-based protections against abusive bot traffic * Optimized several high-traffic API endpoints to reduce redundant backend calls * Added new monitoring and alerting for storage I/O thresholds ### Timeline May 26 - June 1, 2026 | Time | Status | Details | | --- | --- | --- | | Mon 5/26, 6:39 AM PDT | Investigating | Issue reported | | Mon 5/26, 7:26 AM PDT | Monitoring | Fix implemented, monitoring results | | Mon 5/26, 8:37 AM PDT | Resolved | Admin hub incident resolved | | Mon 5/26, 10:41 AM PDT | Investigating | Slow performance across customer hubs | | Mon 5/26, 10:49 AM PDT | Monitoring | Quick fix applied, investigating thorough fix | | Mon 5/26, 8:54 PM PDT | Resolved | Customer hub incident resolved | | Tue 5/27, 6:51 AM PDT | Investigating | Issue reported | | Tue 5/27, 7:52 AM PDT | Identified | Fix in progress | | Tue 5/27, 8:57 AM PDT | Monitoring | Slowly recovering | | Tue 5/27, 10:17 AM PDT | Update | Updated 6/3: A routine configuration update coincided with the downtime window, which led us to initially identify it as the cause. Further investigation confirmed the two were unrelated. See root cause and resolution above. | | Tue 5/27, 1:54 PM PDT | Update | Performance and loading still affected, rolling out fixes | | Tue 5/27, 3:37 PM PDT | Resolved | Incident resolved | | Wed 5/28, 6:40 AM PDT | Investigating | Issue reported | | Wed 5/28, 6:43 AM PDT | Identified | Fix being implemented | | Wed 5/28, 7:35 AM PDT | Update | Systems coming back up, working on permanent fix | | Wed 5/28, 8:27 AM PDT | Monitoring | Fix implemented, monitoring results | | Wed 5/28, 10:53 AM PDT | Update | Reports of degraded performance, actively investigating | | Wed 5/28, 1:04 PM PDT | Update | Systems appear stable, rolling out fixes | | Wed 5/28, 6:49 PM PDT | Monitoring | Improvements and fixes deployed, continuing to monitor | | Thu 5/29, 10:03 AM PDT | Monitoring | Systems stable. Bi-directional sync maintenance 9:50–11:59 AM ET. | | Thu 5/29, 11:36 AM PDT | Monitoring | Deploying targeted fixes. Serving all 404s from cache. Degraded read performance. | | Fri 5/30 | Monitoring | Monitoring continues | | Sat 5/31 | Monitoring | Weekend monitoring | | Mon 6/1, 11:16 AM PDT | Resolved | Root cause identified and resolved. Systems stable since Thursday, May 29. | ### Path Forward We are using this incident to make lasting improvements to reliability and incident response: * **Storage capacity and isolation:** Restructuring how background processes interact with production storage to eliminate contention under load. * **Caching and performance:** The caching improvements shipped during the incident are permanent. We are continuing to expand cache coverage across additional endpoints and page types. * **Bot and traffic protection:** Strengthening rate limiting and abuse detection to prevent bot traffic from contributing to backend load. * **Monitoring and alerting:** Adding proactive capacity monitoring with earlier thresholds so the team can intervene before customers are affected. * **Incident response:** Improving our internal processes for faster escalation and more frequent status page updates during multi-day incidents. ### Final Note During the incident, we posted an update referencing a platform update. That was our initial hypothesis based on timing. Further investigation confirmed it was unrelated. The change in question was a routine, isolated configuration update and had no impact on the outage or any other customers. We should have waited for confirmation before publishing it, and we're tightening our internal process for status page updates as a result. We know how critical your documentation is to your customers, and this level of disruption is not acceptable. We have already shipped meaningful improvements to prevent recurrence, and the work outlined above will continue through the coming weeks. If you have questions, reach out to your account team or contact [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).

We are experiencing slow performance across customer hubs

We have identified and quickly fixed the issue and are currently investigating a more thorough fix

This incident has been resolved.

We are currently investigating this issue.

A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.

This incident has been resolved.

We are investigating slowness across hubs.

A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.

This incident has been resolved.

We are currently investigating this issue.

The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.

A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.

This incident has been resolved.

We are currently investigating an issue creating changelogs

We have identified the issue preventing the changelog creation page from rendering correctly, and we are working on a fix

We have deployed the fix and are monitoring the results

This incident has been resolved.

We are currently investigating an issue where customers are unable to create branches

We have identified the issue and are currently looking into a fix

Branches and versions can now be created successfully

We are currently investigating this issue.

We are continuing to investigate this issue.

A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.

This incident has been resolved.

We are currently investigating downtime impacting admin users.

An issue has been identified with a third-party provider. A fix is being implemented.

A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.

Admin dashboard is recovering and we are continuing to monitor for further issues.

Fix has been applied and admin requests have recovered. We are continuing to monitor for any further issues.

Issues with admin requests have been resolved.

We are currently investigating performance issues across the platform.

We've discovered the issue and have implemented a quick fix

Fix has been implemented and performance has stabilized.

The admin interface is experiencing slower than expected response times.

Performance has returned to normal, and we are continuing to monitor.

This incident has been resolved.

We are getting reports of slow performance and 500 errors when loading pages

We've stabilized our platform and our response times have improved. We are currently monitoring the situation.

Performance has stabilized and we are no longer returning errors upon loading pages.