Cost Governance

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

Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://mp-staging.autogineer.com/agent-skills/microsoft/cost-governance/download

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

Quick Reference

Intent	Workflow	Primary tools
Check budget status	Budget health	`list_budgets`, `forecast_costs`, `query_costs`, `list_alerts`
Configure a budget	Budget setup	Cost tools, `create_budget`
Review guardrails	Guardrails	Resource 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

Confirm scope and load the matching workflow.
Never transform MCP results in a shell or interpreter; request tool-side filtering or bounded follow-up queries.
Distinguish access failures from empty results.
Report gaps without implying budgets cap spend.

Error Handling

Error	Action
Access denied	Name missing permission.
No budget or forecast	Report unavailable data, not zero.
Multiple currencies	Never sum or compare across currencies.
Write conflict	Preserve the budget.
Server error	Retry once; then stop with the trace ID.

Files

ATTRIBUTION.mdAdded by AutoGineer971 B
LICENSELicence file added by AutoGineer1.1 KiB
SKILL.md1.8 KiB
references/budget-health.md1.9 KiB
references/budget-setup.md2.5 KiB
references/guardrails.md1.8 KiB
references/tool-fallback.md1.2 KiB

ATTRIBUTION.md

Attribution

This folder is an unmodified copy of the Agent Skill "cost-governance", distributed by AutoGineer (https://autogineer.com/agent-skills).

Source: https://github.com/microsoft/skills/tree/0696600436a9669184ce47e8d8b2ceac62e4bfac/.github/plugins/azure-cost/skills/cost-governance
Commit: 0696600436a9669184ce47e8d8b2ceac62e4bfac
Created by: Microsoft (https://github.com/microsoft/skills/tree/0696600436a9669184ce47e8d8b2ceac62e4bfac/.github/plugins/azure-cost/skills/cost-governance)
Publisher: Microsoft (https://github.com/microsoft)
Licence: MIT License (https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html)
Licence evidence: declared in the frontmatter ("license: MIT")
Retrieved: 2026-11-07

The skill's own files are unmodified copies. AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by the author or the publisher.

Files added by AutoGineer

ATTRIBUTION.md: this file, written by AutoGineer
LICENSE: copied from .github/plugins/azure-cost/LICENSE

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.

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Download ZIP

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