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Cost Governance

MicrosoftOfficialCreated by Microsoft

  • Skill
  • Workflow
  • Cloud and DevOps
  • MIT
  • No issues found
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From the author

Govern Azure costs with budgets, alerts, tags, and policy restrictions. WHEN: "Azure budget health", "configured budget overrun", "list Azure budgets", "create Azure budget", "budget alerts", "budget coverage", "missing CostCenter tags", "allowed VM SKUs", "allowed Azure regions", "would this SKU be denied", "cost guardrails". DO NOT USE FOR: planning-target forecasts, bill investigations, pricing, rightsizing, or commitments.
— the description by Microsoft

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

Cost Governance provides a systematic approach to managing Azure expenditures. It enables users to monitor budget health, configure new budget thresholds, and review resource guardrails. The skill emphasizes data-driven reporting by comparing current spend against forecasts and budget limits, while ensuring that users understand that Azure budgets serve as notification mechanisms rather than hard spending caps. It includes specific workflows for assessing existing budget states, proposing new configurations based on historical trends, and verifying the successful implementation of cost controls.

What it does

  • Monitors current budget status and identifies spending pace relative to elapsed time.
  • Generates cost forecasts to identify potential overruns before they occur.
  • Configures budget alerts based on actual spend and forecasted projections.
  • Reviews resource guardrails using Azure Resource Graph.
  • Validates existing budget configurations to prevent duplicate or conflicting entries.
  • Reports on top cost drivers and historical alert data.

When to use it

  • When you need to check the health and status of existing Azure budgets.
  • When setting up new budget tracking for a specific subscription or resource group.
  • When you need to identify if current spending is outpacing established budget thresholds.
  • When verifying if resources comply with cost-related guardrails like allowed regions or SKUs.
  • When you need to report on cost drivers and historical alert performance.

Advantages

  • Provides clear, data-backed insights into budget pacing and forecasted variance.
  • Prevents accidental budget overwrites by enforcing verification steps.
  • Standardizes the process for proposing and creating new budget alerts.
  • Ensures accurate reporting by distinguishing between actual spend and projected forecasts.
  • Maintains clear separation between different currencies to avoid calculation errors.

Usage examples

“What is the current health of my Azure budgets?”
The agent lists active budgets, calculates the percentage used versus the period elapsed, and provides a forecast to identify potential overruns.
“Create a new budget for my production resource group.”
The agent assesses existing budgets, builds a baseline from recent costs, proposes a configuration, and creates the budget after explicit user confirmation.
“Are there any missing CostCenter tags in my environment?”
The agent queries the environment to identify resources lacking the required tags and reports the findings as part of the guardrail review.
“Would this VM SKU be denied by current policies?”
The agent checks the requested SKU against existing policy restrictions and confirms whether it is permitted in the target region.

Install

  1. Download the skill as a ZIP:

    https://autogineer.com/agent-skills/microsoft/cost-governance/download

  2. Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

    mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip cost-governance.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by Microsoft

Cost Governance

Quick Reference

IntentWorkflowPrimary tools
Check budget statusBudget healthlist_budgets, forecast_costs, query_costs, list_alerts
Configure a budgetBudget setupCost tools, create_budget
Review guardrailsGuardrailsResource Graph, list_budgets

When to Use This Skill

Use for budgets, alerts, tags, and policy.

MCP Tools

Use cost tools for budgets; Resource Graph for guardrails. Writes need confirmed scope, amount, thresholds, and recipients. Fallback: API mappings.

Workflow

  1. Confirm scope and load the matching workflow.

  2. Never transform MCP results in a shell or interpreter; request tool-side filtering or bounded follow-up queries.

  3. Distinguish access failures from empty results.

  4. Report gaps without implying budgets cap spend.

Error Handling

ErrorAction
Access deniedName missing permission.
No budget or forecastReport unavailable data, not zero.
Multiple currenciesNever sum or compare across currencies.
Write conflictPreserve the budget.
Server errorRetry once; then stop with the trace ID.

Files

references/budget-health.md

Budget Health

Measure Current Pace

  1. Call list_budgets for the target scope. Distinguish no budgets from denied access and preserve each budget's amount, time grain, filters, thresholds, contacts, and current-spend period.

  2. Calculate percent used from the budget response. Compare it with the percent of the budget period elapsed to identify whether spend is ahead of, near, or behind an even pace. Do not treat even pacing as a business target.

  3. Call forecast_costs on the same scope and period. For each date, use Actual when present, otherwise Forecast, then sum by currency. If no forecast exists, report current spend and pace without presenting a projection.

Explain Risk

  1. Compare the end-of-period forecast with the budget amount and configured thresholds. Distinguish a forecasted overrun from a high current burn rate; either can occur without the other.

  2. Call query_costs for current-period spend grouped by ServiceName, then narrow the leading driver when needed. Use the budget's current spend as the source of truth for percentage; use cost queries only for attribution.

  3. Compare equal prior budget periods when available. Label a driver recurring only when it appears consistently; do not infer recurrence from one period.

  4. Call list_alerts. Treat alerts whose periodStartDate matches the current period as current. Label older alerts as history and identify configured thresholds that have not fired. Inspect the returned alert fields directly; do not use a shell or local interpreter to search or reshape the response.

Report

Show amount, current spend, percent used, period elapsed, pace, forecast, forecasted variance, current and historical alerts, top drivers, recurrence, currency, and one owner action. Never imply that a budget caps or stops spend.

If no budget exists, offer the Budget Setup workflow.

Requirements and compatibility

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Security

No issues found by our static scan· No issues found

A static scan is not a guarantee. Skills are third-party content: review a skill before you let an agent use it.

Attribution and licence

Created by
Microsoft
Publisher
Microsoft (Official)
Source
microsoft/skills · .github/plugins/azure-cost/skills/cost-governance · commit 0696600
Licence
MIT License (redistribution allowed)
  • LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from .github/plugins/azure-cost/LICENSE)
  • ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
Synced

AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft or Microsoft.

Download ZIP

The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download cost-governance.zip