Azure Skills Plugin is an agent plugin that packages Azure-specific guidance with MCP server configurations for carrying out Azure work. Coding agents use it to plan, deploy, troubleshoot, monitor, govern, and optimize Azure applications and services. The catalogue entries are the plugin's skills, instructions, and execution integrations.
Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx agentmods add skills/microsoft/azure-skills/preparenpx skills add microsoft/azure-skills --skill preparegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/azure-skillsWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/azure-skills/prepare)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/azure-skills/prepare"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/azure-skills/prepare.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00000 | $0.01585 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00000 | $0.00792 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00000 | $0.00317 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00000 | $0.00159 |
Grade A, and why
prepare scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
This is a copy
100% identical to prepare — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Prepare — Architecture Planning & Cost Estimation
Quick Reference
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Best for | Mapping app components to Azure services with cost estimation and quota validation |
| Inputs | prereq-output.json + context.json from .copilot-azure/sessions/{id}/ |
| Outputs | prepare-plan.json written to session directory |
| Parent | azure-app-onboard |
When to Use This Skill
Invoked by the azure-app-onboard orchestrator at Phase 2 when prereq-output.json exists. Not directly user-routable.
Return to orchestrator: When complete, return control to
azure-app-onboard. Do NOT directly invoke scaffold or deploy.
When NOT to Use
| Scenario | Use Instead |
|---|---|
| Code readiness or prereq scanning | azure-app-onboard Step 3 (prereq) |
| IaC generation from a completed plan | azure-app-onboard Step 7 (scaffold) |
| Deploying resources to Azure | azure-app-onboard Step 9 (deploy) |
| Optimizing existing Azure spend | azure-cost |
| Estimating VM-specific costs | azure-compute |
| Enterprise landing zone architecture | azure-enterprise-infra-planner |
MCP Tools
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
mcp_azure_mcp_pricing / azure-pricing (router → command: pricing_get) |
Cost estimation (inline — see Step 6). Fallback: dispatch subagent-pricing.md |
mcp_azure_mcp_policy |
Subscription policy constraints |
az rest |
Quota validation (via sub-agent — see Step 5) |
mcp_azure_mcp_cloudarchitect → cloudarchitect_design |
WAF-aligned architecture design |
mcp_azure_mcp_wellarchitectedframework |
Per-service WAF guidance |
mcp_azure_mcp_advisor → advisor_recommendation_list |
Optimization recommendations |
Workflow
| # | Step | Action | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Read session state | Load prereq-output.json + context.json. Resolve subscription |
Cross-ref subscription-resolution.md if needed |
| 2 | Query policy constraints | Inline MCP: fetch policy + advisor recommendations | mcp_azure_mcp_policy + mcp_azure_mcp_advisor |
| 3 | Map components to services | Per-component Azure service selection, Dockerfile routing, deploy-as-is | ⛔ You MUST read service-mapping.md and deploy-strategy.md |
| 4 | Select SKUs + WAF analysis | Budget-aware SKU selection, inline WAF service guidance | ⛔ You MUST read sku-matrix.md |
| 5 | Validate quotas + region capacity | ⛔ Read subagent-quota.md → dispatch as task (NEXT action MUST be task, ⛔ agent_type: "task" — NEVER "general-purpose"). Copy the COMPLETE and UNMODIFIED template text into the task prompt between <<<TEMPLATE_START>>> / <<<TEMPLATE_END>>> delimiters — do NOT summarize. Append the caller-provided inputs listed in subagent-quota.md's Input table AFTER the template block. ⛔ After dispatching, proceed to Step 6 (cost estimation) while the subagent runs. Do NOT run quota checks yourself — the subagent handles it. Collect subagent results before Step 9 (write plan). |
⛔ You MUST read subagent-quota.md |
| 6 | Estimate costs | ⛔ You MUST read pricing-guide.md for methodology, then pricing-guide-services.md for per-service filters. Call the pricing router (mcp_azure_mcp_pricing/azure-pricing) with command: "pricing_get" + a parameters{} object inline per paid service. If MCP unavailable or fails → ⛔ Read subagent-pricing.md → dispatch as task (NEXT action MUST be task, ⛔ agent_type: "task" — NEVER "general-purpose"). Copy the COMPLETE and UNMODIFIED template text into the task prompt between <<<TEMPLATE_START>>> / <<<TEMPLATE_END>>> delimiters — do NOT summarize. Append data (services[], region, budget tier) AFTER the template block. Write results to prepare-plan.json.costEstimate. |
pricing-guide.md |
| 7 | Generate naming | Centralized naming: suffix, prefix, all resource names | ⛔ You MUST read naming-patterns.md |
| 8 | Determine IaC format | Existing non-Azure .tf → ask_user Bicep vs TF, write to overrides[].iacFormat. No .tf → default Bicep. |
(inline) |
| 9 | Write prepare-plan.json | Per PreparePlan schema. Include postDeployRecommendations, deploymentVariables |
⛔ You MUST read prepare-schemas.ts for PreparePlan schema |
| 10 | Return summary | Structured summary for orchestrator approval gate | (inline — 1 line) |
| 11 | Validate plan | 4-dimension check: Goal Alignment, WAF Alignment, Dependency Completeness, Deployment Viability. Fix inline on failure, document tradeoffs in assumptions[]. |
All must pass before writing |
What ships with it
12 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
- references/deploy-strategy.md 6.8 KB
- references/mcp-tools.md 5.6 KB
- references/naming-patterns.md 4.6 KB
- references/prepare-schemas.ts 7.0 KB runs code
- references/pricing-guide-services.md 8.4 KB
- references/pricing-guide.md 4.0 KB
- references/service-mapping.md 8.0 KB
- references/sku-matrix.md 3.2 KB
- references/sku-quota-validation.md 9.0 KB
- references/subagent-pricing.md 2.5 KB
- references/subagent-quota.md 3.5 KB
- references/validation-rubric.md 2.3 KB
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 5d ago First seen · 72 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A f50410a3022f
prepare is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/azure-skills (1,448 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,585 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to prepare, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.
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