Analyze Skill

Comprehensive cloud cost analysis with capability-based discovery.

Purpose

Provide cost visibility through:

• •Capability-based cloud cost discovery
• •Multi-dimensional cost breakdown
• •Anomaly detection
• •Trend analysis
• •Budget tracking

Commands

Process

1. Discover Cost Data Sources

Check for capabilities:

• •cloud-cost: Cloud provider billing data
• •kubernetes-cost: Container cost allocation
• •multi-cloud-cost: Unified cost aggregation
• •infrastructure-cost: IaC-based cost estimation
• •cost-optimization: Recommendations engine

Fallback hierarchy: Cloud billing APIs → Multi-cloud platforms → IaC modeling → Manual entry

See Capability Discovery.

2. Aggregate Cost Data

By Service: Compute, Storage, Database, Network, Other By Dimension: Team, Project, Environment, Region, Time

3. Calculate Metrics

Total spend, daily spend, cost per unit, change vs prior, top drivers

See Cost Metrics for comprehensive KPIs.

4. Detect Anomalies

Indicators: >20% variance, new services, spikes, budget breaches

Methods: Threshold, statistical (Z-score), trend-based, service-specific

See Anomaly Detection.

5. Generate Breakdown

Multi-dimensional analysis across service × team × environment × time.

6. Track vs Budget

Current vs budget, projected EOM spend, alert thresholds (50%, 80%, 100%)

Integration

wicked-mem: Store/retrieve cost data wicked-search: Find resource configurations wicked-kanban: Track cost reviews

Output Format

## Cloud Cost Analysis: {Period}

### Executive Summary
**Total Spend**: ${total}
**Change**: {+/-}% vs {prior}
**Budget Status**: {ON TRACK | OVER | UNDER}
**Top Drivers**: {top 3}

### Cost Breakdown

#### By Service
| Service | Current | Prior | Change | % Total |
{rows}

#### By Team
| Team | Cost | Budget | Variance |
{rows}

### Anomalies
- {service}: ${amount} ({%}) - {reason}

### Budget Tracking
**Cap**: ${budget}
**Current**: ${current} ({%}%)
**Projected**: ${projected}

### Recommendations
1. {action}

Data Requirements

Minimum: Cost by service, total spend Recommended: 6+ months history, tags, usage metrics, budgets Optimal: Real-time APIs, resource-level granularity, business metrics

Capability Discovery

Query for available cost capabilities at runtime:

cloud-cost Capability

Provides cloud provider billing and usage data. Tools exposing this capability offer service-level breakdowns, cost allocation tags, and time-series data.

kubernetes-cost Capability

Provides container-level cost allocation, namespace/pod costs, and efficiency metrics for Kubernetes workloads.

multi-cloud-cost Capability

Provides unified cost aggregation across multiple cloud providers with normalized reporting and cross-provider analytics.

infrastructure-cost Capability

Provides cost estimation based on infrastructure-as-code definitions. Useful for planning and "what-if" scenarios.

See Discovery Patterns for detailed capability detection logic.

Events

Published:

• •[finops:analysis:started:success]
• •[finops:analysis:completed:success]
• •[finops:anomaly:detected:warning]

Configuration

analysis:
  default_period: monthly
  anomaly_threshold: 20
  currency: USD

tagging:
  required_tags: [Team, Project, Environment]

Tips

1. •Tag Everything: Enables cost allocation
2. •Review Regularly: Weekly checks, monthly deep dives
3. •Compare Periods: Trends matter
4. •Investigate Spikes: Every anomaly needs explanation
5. •Share Widely: Transparency drives accountability

Reference Materials

• •Capability Discovery - Find cloud cost tools
• •Anomaly Detection Methods - Detect spikes
• •Cost Metrics Reference - FinOps KPIs