microsoft/skills is a collection of skills, custom agents, AGENTS.md templates, plugins, hooks, commands, and MCP configurations that give AI coding agents context for Azure SDK and Microsoft AI Foundry development. Developers use it to install selected domain-specific guidance into coding-agent environments. The catalogue entries are the repository’s own agent resources and supporting configurations.
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 skills add microsoft/skills --skill cost-analysisgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/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/skills/cost-analysis)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/skills/cost-analysis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/skills/cost-analysis/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/skills/cost-analysis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/skills/cost-analysis.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" 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 5.1 | $0.00098 | $0.00446 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00039 | $0.00178 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00020 | $0.00089 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00010 | $0.00045 |
Grade A, and why
cost-analysis 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 3d 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.
Copies of this mod
1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:
- cost-analysis — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
What it actually says
Azure Cost Analysis
Quick Reference
| Intent | Workflow | Primary tools |
|---|---|---|
| Query historical spend | Cost query | query_costs |
| Explain a spike | Cost investigation | query_costs, Resource Graph |
| Analyze AKS spend | AKS cost analysis | query_aks_costs, Resource Graph |
| Analyze AI service spend | AI cost analysis | query_costs |
When to Use This Skill
Use for spend, anomalies, and AKS or AI allocation.
MCP Tools
Use cost tools and Resource Graph first. If an operation is unavailable, follow fallback and safety.
Workflow
- Confirm scope, period, currency, and breakdown.
- Load only the matching workflow above.
- Never transform MCP results in a shell or interpreter; request tool-side totals, grouping, sorting, or bounded follow-up queries.
- Respect row limits and label incomplete data.
- Separate measured cost from inferred causes and recommendations.
Error Handling
| Error | Action |
|---|---|
| Access denied | Name the required scope and role. |
| Empty result | Distinguish no data from unavailable data. |
| Multiple currencies | Report each currency separately. |
| Server error | Retry once; then stop with the trace ID. |
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/ai-cost-analysis.md 2.1 KB
- references/aks-anomaly.md 1.4 KB
- references/aks-cost-analysis.md 1.5 KB
- references/aks-enablement.md 1.4 KB
- references/cost-investigation.md 3.2 KB
- references/cost-query/dimensions-by-scope.md 1.5 KB
- references/cost-query/error-handling.md 1.5 KB
- references/cost-query/examples.md 1.2 KB
- references/cost-query/guardrails.md 1.7 KB
- references/cost-query/request-body-schema.md 1.4 KB
- references/cost-query/workflow.md 2.6 KB
- references/tools-and-safety.md 2.2 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.
- 3d ago First seen · 47 lines · 98 tokens per session scan A a3708374c3c6
cost-analysis is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/skills (3,056 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 98 tokens to every session and 446 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-24.
Other skills, from other repositories
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Cost Anomaly Detector
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GCP Billing Interpreter
Specialist in GCP billing export, BigQuery cost analysis, and Google Cloud's specific pricing quirks -- committed use discounts, sustained use discounts, per-second billing, and the export schema most teams underuse.
FOCUS Data Engineer
End-to-end ingest, transform, and conformance specialist for FOCUS-shaped cost datasets. Handles AWS CUR 2.0, Azure Cost Management exports, GCP billing export, OCI cost & usage, and SaaS billing. Operates the FOCUS Validator and Requirements Analyzer; orchestrates parallel-run migrations.