Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for executing simulated failure scenarios on a computing system using natural language inputs in a domain-specific language. Embodiments includes receiving a failure scenario definition, which may be a natural language input identifying target systems in a distributed computing system, properties, and an expected outcome of a simulated system failure. Commands directed to the identified target systems to simulate a system failure on the identified systems according to the identified properties are generated and transmitted to the identified target systems for execution. The outcome of the simulated system failure is monitored, recorded, and compared to the expected outcome of the simulated system failure. Upon determining that the recorded outcome and expected outcome of the simulated system failure differ, an alert identifying a difference between the recorded outcome and the expected outcome is generated.