Use cloud-cost-review
Review actual cloud spend from a cost export (AWS CUR or Data Exports, GCP billing export, Azure cost details) and produce a ranked savings report
Review actual cloud spend from a cost export (AWS CUR or Data Exports, GCP billing export, Azure cost details) and produce a ranked savings report — idle and unattached resources, oversized instances backed by utilisation evidence, storage tiering, data transfer hot spots, commitment coverage and untagged spend — each finding with a monthly saving computed from the bill, a confidence level and an ease rating.
Reach for it when the user shares a cost CSV and says "where are we wasting money", "review our AWS bill", "why did the cloud bill jump this month", "find savings in our GCP/Azure spend", or "should we buy savings plans".
Install it
npx skilldrop-cli install cloud-cost-review # Claude Code, your user folder
npx skilldrop-cli install cloud-cost-review --project # Claude Code, this repo
npx skilldrop-cli install cloud-cost-review --ide cursor # or kiro, codex, antigravity, copilot
It is part of the SRE / on-call pack: --pack sre-oncall installs it with its neighbours.
It ships scripts, so it needs Python 3 (standard library only, nothing to install). What they may touch is declared in its manifest.
Ask for it
Say it the way you would to a colleague. Requests like these route to it:
- "Here's our AWS CUR for the last two months — where are we wasting money?"
- "Why did our Azure bill jump in September? Cost export attached"
- "Review this GCP billing export for idle resources, untagged spend and committed use coverage"
- "Should we buy more savings plans? Here's the cost and usage report"
Requests like these belong to a different skill, so it shouldn't answer them:
- "Estimate what the new search service will cost to run at 10x our current traffic"
- "Our log volume is out of control — design what we should log, sample, and alert on"
- "Write the postmortem for the runaway batch job that burned $40k last weekend"
If another skill answers instead, ask for this one by name: "use cloud-cost-review".
Check what you get
A good result:
- Every amount traces to the script output or to arithmetic shown in the finding. No list prices from memory, and no "industry average" savings percentages.
- Rightsizing needs utilisation evidence. An instance finding without CPU and memory data goes under Evidence needed, not in the ranked table.
- Each finding has a monthly saving, a confidence level and an ease rating, or sits in Evidence needed with what to collect.
- Ranked by saving × ease, and sequenced so waste removal happens before any commitment purchase.
- The month-over-month change is explained by named movers, not described as "costs went up".
- Untagged share is reported both against all spend and against spend that has a resource id, because data transfer and support lines often can't be tagged.
- Excluded lines are stated. Tax, credits, refunds and commitment fees are listed separately so the review doesn't hide credits that mask waste.
See a worked example
Use something else when
- Estimating cost before launch, or projecting at 3× or 10× growth. Use
capacity-cost-model. - Designing telemetry or a logging budget from scratch. Use
observability-plan, though this skill flags logging cost as a hot spot. - Writing up an incident, including a cost spike from a runaway job. Use
postmortem-generator. - Reporting AI tool usage or spend by user. Use
ai-usage-report. - Defining business KPIs for a feature or product. Use
success-metrics.
Next
- SKILL.md, the instructions the agent reads
- Its page on the site
- Related: ai-usage-report, capacity-cost-model, observability-plan, postmortem-generator, success-metrics