ZygmaCore Incident Simulator

A Python CLI game that simulates real-world incident response for on-call engineers.

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📘 About The Project

ZygmaCore Incident Simulator is an interactive Python command-line simulator that puts you in the role of an on-call engineer during a production incident.

The system presents a scenario:

INCIDENT: SERVER DOWN
The main API server is unresponsive, users are seeing errors, and metrics are spiking.

Your job is to choose what to do next — check logs, ping the server, restart it blindly, or investigate deeper.
Each decision leads to different outcomes: ✅ success, 😐 neutral, or ❌ disaster.

This project is designed as both:

• A fun CLI game for engineers.
• A learning tool for practicing structured incident response thinking.

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💡 Why This Project Exists

Most beginner Python projects focus on calculators, to-do apps, or simple utilities.
This simulator is different — it introduces:

• Realistic SRE/DevOps scenarios (server down, bad deploy, DB issues).
• Decision trees with consequences, not just right/wrong answers.
• Narrative-driven learning, which is more memorable than static tutorials.

It helps:

• New developers understand why “just restart the server” can be dangerous.
• Students practice input handling, branching logic, and loops.
• Engineers reflect on better incident response strategies in a low-risk environment.

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🖼 Screenshot

🛠 Technical Stack

Technology	Usage
🐍 Python 3	Core language for the simulator logic
💻 CLI / Terminal	User interaction and scenario choices
📦 os	Clears the screen between scenes (os.system("clear"))
⏱ time	Displays the time when the incident summary is generated

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✨ Key Features

• 🖼 ASCII Art Intro
  Stylish server illustration to set the mood before the incident begins.

• 🚨 Realistic Incident Scenario
  “Server down” situation with user impact and monitoring alerts.

• 🧠 Branching Decision Tree
  Multiple choices at each step (check logs, ping, restart, investigate, etc.).

• 🎯 Multiple Endings

  • ✅ SUCCESS ENDING – root cause identified, minimal downtime.
  • 😐 NEUTRAL ENDING – service restored, but RCA incomplete.
  • ❌ BAD ENDING – inaction makes things worse.
  • 💥 CATASTROPHIC ENDING – blind restart causes major outage.

• 🧪 Input Validation
  Ensures numeric choices where required and handles invalid input with “GAME OVER” style messaging.

• 🔁 Replay Loop
  After each run, the user can retry the incident simulation without restarting the program.

• 🕒 Timestamped Summary
  Displays a “Generated at” time to simulate real incident timeline context.

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🚀 Getting Started

Follow the steps below to run the ZygmaCore Incident Simulator locally.

✅ Prerequisites

You’ll need:

• Python 3.8+
• A terminal:
  • macOS / Linux: Terminal
  • Windows: PowerShell or Command Prompt

💡 Note: The script uses os.system("clear") which works on macOS/Linux.
On Windows, you may change it to cls or remove the clear calls.

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📦 Installation

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/ZygmaCore/incident_simulator.git
   cd incident_simulator

2. (Optional) Create and activate a virtual environment

   python -m venv .venv
   # On macOS/Linux
   source .venv/bin/activate
   # On Windows
   .venv\Scripts\activate

3. Prepare the script

   Ensure the main script (for example main.py) contains the provided code and is located in the project root.

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▶️ Usage

Run the simulator from your terminal:

python main.py

You’ll see something like:

==============================
ZYGMACORE INCIDENT SIMULATOR
==============================

INCIDENT: SERVER DOWN
The main API server is currently UNRESPONSIVE.
Users are reporting errors and the monitoring system shows elevated failure rates.
You are the on-call engineer. What will you do?

1) Check server logs.
2) Ping the server
3) Restart the server immediately

Example flow:

• Choose 1 → Check logs → see HTTP 500 errors after a recent deployment.

• Then choose:

  • 1 → Inspect DB connection → find exhausted connection pool → ✅ SUCCESS ENDING
  • 2 → Rollback deployment → service recovers but RCA incomplete → 😐 NEUTRAL ENDING
  • 3 → Ignore and wait → ❌ BAD ENDING

At the end of a run, you’ll see:

==============================
INCIDENT SIMULATOR COMPLETED
==============================
Retry Again? (Y/N)

Enter y to replay, or n to exit with a final:

Have a Good Day~

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions, suggestions, and improvements are very welcome! ✨

If you’d like to contribute:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a new branch: git checkout -b feature/your-feature-name
3. Commit your changes: git commit -m "Add feature: your-feature-name"
4. Push to your branch: git push origin feature/your-feature-name
5. Open a Pull Request with a clear description of your changes

Ideas for contributions:

• Add more incident scenarios (e.g., latency spikes, database outage, queue backlog)
• Add difficulty levels
• Add colorized output using libraries like rich
• Improve input validation and error messaging

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📄 License & Contact

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for full details.

Author Contact:
🌐 https://alhikam.me 🐙 https://github.com/ZygmaCore