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Azure Cost Management

Azure Cost ManagementSkill

by Microsoft
Added to Onei
1 views
v1.3.1
MIT
Repository Docs
markdown Development

Summary

Microsoft's official Azure skill for cost work: query historical spend, forecast it, and hunt down waste like orphaned disks and oversized VMs.

Features

  • Routes between cost query, optimization and forecast workflows
  • Azure Cost Management query and forecast APIs with correct api-version
  • Handles subscription, resource group, management group and billing account scopes
  • Waste hunting: orphaned resources, VM rightsizing, AKS and storage spend
  • Service-specific playbooks for Azure Cache for Redis and Azure Storage
  • States the exact RBAC roles required before it starts

Install This Skill

Add this skill to your favorite AI agent in a few steps.

Any AI agent

This skill is plain instructions — it works with any assistant that accepts custom instructions or system prompts.

  1. Copy the skill content with the button below.
  2. Paste it into your agent's instruction file or system prompt (for example AGENTS.md, .cursorrules, or a custom instructions field).
  3. Ask the agent to apply the skill whenever the task matches.

Skill Content

Markdown Content

Copy this content and use it with your preferred AI agent

---
name: azure-cost
description: "Azure cost management: query costs, forecast spending, optimize to reduce waste. WHEN: \"Azure costs\", \"Azure bill\", \"cost breakdown\", \"how much am I spending\", \"forecast spending\", \"optimize costs\", \"reduce spending\", \"orphaned resources\", \"rightsize VMs\", \"cost spike\", \"reduce storage costs\", \"AKS cost\". DO NOT USE FOR: deploying resources, provisioning, diagnostics, or security audits."
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Microsoft
  version: "1.3.1"
---

# Azure Cost Management Skill

Query historical costs, forecast future spending, optimize to reduce waste.

## Routing

| User Intent | Workflow |
|-------------|----------|
| Understand current costs | [Cost Query](cost-query/workflow.md) |
| Reduce costs / find waste | [Cost Optimization](cost-optimization/workflow.md) |
| Project future costs | [Cost Forecast](cost-forecast/workflow.md) |

## Quick Reference

| Property | Value |
|----------|-------|
| **Query API** | `POST {scope}/providers/Microsoft.CostManagement/query?api-version=2023-11-01` |
| **Forecast API** | `POST {scope}/providers/Microsoft.CostManagement/forecast?api-version=2023-11-01` |
| **Required Role** | Cost Management Reader + Monitoring Reader + Reader (on target scope) |

## Scope Patterns

- Subscription: `/subscriptions/<id>`
- Resource Group: `/subscriptions/<id>/resourceGroups/<name>`
- Management Group: `/providers/Microsoft.Management/managementGroups/<id>`
- Billing Account: `/providers/Microsoft.Billing/billingAccounts/<id>`

## Service-Specific Optimization

- [Redis](cost-optimization/services/redis/azure-cache-for-redis.md)
- [Storage](cost-optimization/services/storage/azure-storage.md)

## References

- [MCP Tools, Best Practices, Safety](references/tools-and-best-practices.md)
- [SDK: Redis .NET](cost-optimization/sdk/azure-resource-manager-redis-dotnet.md)

Usage Instructions

Learn how to use this skill with different AI agents.

Generic Instructions

Install the plugin, then ask in plain language: "what did we spend on the prod resource group last month?", "forecast next quarter's Azure bill", "find orphaned resources I can delete", "why did costs spike on the 3rd?"

Example Usage

Break down last month's Azure spend for subscription X by service, then show me the three biggest sources of waste and what deleting them would save.

Description

azure-cost is one of the skills in microsoft/azure-skills, Microsoft's official
agent plugin for Azure. It handles the money side of a subscription, and it is built as a router
rather than one long prompt: the skill classifies what you are asking for and then loads only the
workflow file that matches.

Three workflows

  • Cost Query — what am I spending, broken down how. Backed by

POST {scope}/providers/Microsoft.CostManagement/query.

  • Cost Optimization — where is the waste. This is the interesting one: orphaned resources,

oversized VMs, AKS spend, storage tiering, and service-specific playbooks for Azure Cache for
Redis and Azure Storage.

  • Cost Forecast — what will I spend, via the Cost Management forecast API.

Scopes. Every query runs against an explicit scope, and the skill knows all four shapes:
subscription, resource group, management group and billing account. That matters because a cost
figure without a scope is meaningless, and getting the scope string wrong is the usual reason these
API calls fail.

Permissions. Cost Management Reader plus Monitoring Reader plus Reader on the target scope. The
skill states this up front rather than letting an agent discover it through a 403.

What it deliberately does not do. Deploying or provisioning resources, diagnostics, and security
audits are other skills in the same plugin — the description tells the agent to route elsewhere for
those, which keeps it from being loaded on every Azure question.

MIT licensed, authored by Microsoft, and installable as part of the azure-skills plugin.

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