cost-analysis

Answers where your Azure money went, keeping the measured figures apart from any guess about why.

WHEN TO USE

SCOPE

USE FOR

See what you spent on Azure over a period, broken down the way you choose.
Find out what caused a sudden jump in your Azure bill.
Work out what your Kubernetes clusters on Azure cost and how that splits across what runs on them.
See how much your Azure AI services are costing you.

This is a saved copy of the skill's SKILL.md instructions. It may differ from the upstream file or the version you install.

In this document (6)

Azure Cost Analysis

Quick Reference

Intent	Workflow	Primary tools
Query historical spend	Cost query	`query_costs`
Explain a spike	Cost investigation	`query_costs`, Resource Graph
Analyze AKS spend	AKS cost analysis	`query_aks_costs`, Resource Graph
Analyze AI service spend	AI cost analysis	`query_costs`

When to Use This Skill

Use for spend, anomalies, and AKS or AI allocation.

MCP Tools

Use cost tools and Resource Graph first. If an operation is unavailable, follow fallback and safety.

Workflow

Confirm scope, period, currency, and breakdown.
Load only the matching workflow above.
Never transform MCP results in a shell or interpreter; request tool-side totals, grouping, sorting, or bounded follow-up queries.
Respect row limits and label incomplete data.
Separate measured cost from inferred causes and recommendations.

Error Handling

Error	Action
Access denied	Name the required scope and role.
Empty result	Distinguish no data from unavailable data.
Multiple currencies	Report each currency separately.
Server error	Retry once; then stop with the trace ID.

This skill ships inside the Azure Skills Plugin. Listed package contents include hooks and an MCP server. Installed components and skill versions may vary by AI tool.

Run this outside your AI tool, using Node.js 22.20.0 or newer. Skills CLI 1.7.2 skips skill selection; prompts cancel installation without an interactive terminal. If choosing Project when asked about installation scope, open your project's folder before running this.

Install checklist

Check selected tools if a picker appears; Claude Code may be unchecked under Additional agents. ↑/↓ moves, Space toggles selections, Enter confirms.
Without a tool picker, check Installing to: for your intended tool. Stop if it names a different tool.
If asked, choose Symlink (Recommended) for shared files or Copy to all agents for separate copies; review the summary before confirming installation.
Install the find-skills skill? defaults to Yes, adding another skill for all projects. Choose No if you don't want that extra installation.

Skills CLI 1.7.2 sends install data to skills.sh by default, including the source, skill names, target tools and file details; GitHub sources are reported only when GitHub confirms the repository is public, while other remote sources can also be reported. Confirmed-public GitHub sources also trigger a security-audit request. Before installing, set the environment variable DO_NOT_TRACK=1 or DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 to disable both.

npx skills add microsoft/azure-skills --skill "cost-analysis" --full-depth

After installing for Claude Code, open it in the installation project if you chose Project; Global makes the skill available across projects on this computer. Once Claude Code loads the skill, its description helps Claude decide when to use it.

If installation created a top-level skills folder that did not exist when your Claude Code session started, run /reload-skills in that session. Run it again after later changes in that folder.

View on GitHub

Same repository

airunway-aks-setup
Set up AI Runway on AKS — from bare cluster to running model. Covers cluster verification, controller install, GPU assessment, provider setup, and first deployment. WHEN: "setup AI Runway", "onboard AKS cluster", "install AI Runway", "airunway setup", "deploy model to AKS", "GPU inference on AKS", "KAITO setup on AKS", "run LLM on AKS", "vLLM on AKS", "set up model serving on AKS", "AI Runway controller".Read full description
appinsights-instrumentation
Guidance for instrumenting webapps with Azure Application Insights. Provides telemetry patterns, SDK setup, and configuration references. WHEN: how to instrument app, App Insights SDK, telemetry patterns, what is App Insights, Application Insights guidance, instrumentation examples, APM best practices.Read full description
azure-ai
Use for Azure AI: Search, Speech, OpenAI, Document Intelligence. Helps with search, vector/hybrid search, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, transcription, OCR. WHEN: AI Search, query search, vector search, hybrid search, semantic search, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, transcribe, OCR, convert text to speech.Read full description
azure-aigateway
Configure Azure API Management as an AI Gateway for AI models, MCP tools, and agents. WHEN: semantic caching, token limit, content safety, load balancing, AI model governance, MCP rate limiting, jailbreak detection, add Azure OpenAI backend, add AI Foundry model, test AI gateway, LLM policies, configure AI backend, token metrics, AI cost control, convert API to MCP, import OpenAPI to gateway.Read full description
azure-app-onboard
End-to-end orchestrator: from a business idea, app idea, or existing app to running Azure deployment with cost estimates and pre-deploy approval. Analyzes your app, auto-detects the right Azure services, scaffolds infrastructure code, and deploys — tailored to your app, not a template. Handles moving existing apps to Azure without rewriting or with minimal changes. WHEN: bring your app to Azure, plan my app, cost to run, is my code ready to deploy, deploy my app to the cloud, deploy all my services, what Azure services do I need, plan my Azure deployment, deploy my new app to Azure, one-click deploy, I have an app and want it on Azure, migrate my app to Azure, help me get started, build an app, no code yet, starter project. DO NOT USE FOR: use azd for deployment(use azure-deploy), optimizing existing costs (use cost-optimization), code readiness checks only (use azure-app-onboard-prereq).Read full description
azure-app-onboard-prereq
Assess whether source code is ready to deploy to Azure — the check BEFORE infrastructure work. Evaluates build health, app completeness, dependencies and local services, stack compatibility, and deployment feasibility. Answers questions about what your app needs before it can be deployed — frameworks, dependencies, and configuration. Checks whether dependencies are compatible and identifies deployment blockers and unsupported frameworks. WHEN: \"evaluate my repo\", \"is my app ready to deploy\", \"what does my app need to deploy\", \"what do I need before deploying\", \"does my app need\", \"can I ship this to Azure\", \"scan my repo for issues\", \"is this app deployable\", \"check if my app is ready for Azure\", \"do I need a Dockerfile\", \"what's blocking my deployment\", \"are there any blockers\", \"are my dependencies compatible\", \"does Azure support my framework\", \"what needs to change before deploying\", \"check my app configuration\".Read full description

Azure Cost Analysis

Quick Reference

When to Use This Skill

MCP Tools

Workflow

Error Handling

MCP connection required

More skills

MCP keyword matches