Optimize cloud costs through resource rightsizing, tagging strategies, reserved instances, and spending analysis. Use when reducing cloud expenses, analyzing infrastructure costs, or implementing cost governance policies.
Add this skill
npx mdskills install sickn33/cost-optimizationComprehensive cost optimization guide with concrete examples and multi-cloud coverage
Strategies and patterns for optimizing cloud costs across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
resources/implementation-playbook.md.Implement systematic cost optimization strategies to reduce cloud spending while maintaining performance and reliability.
Savings: 30-72% vs On-Demand
Term: 1 or 3 years
Payment: All/Partial/No upfront
Flexibility: Standard or Convertible
Compute Savings Plans: 66% savings
EC2 Instance Savings Plans: 72% savings
Applies to: EC2, Fargate, Lambda
Flexible across: Instance families, regions, OS
Savings: Up to 90% vs On-Demand
Best for: Batch jobs, CI/CD, stateless workloads
Risk: 2-minute interruption notice
Strategy: Mix with On-Demand for resilience
resource "aws_s3_bucket_lifecycle_configuration" "example" {
bucket = aws_s3_bucket.example.id
rule {
id = "transition-to-ia"
status = "Enabled"
transition {
days = 30
storage_class = "STANDARD_IA"
}
transition {
days = 90
storage_class = "GLACIER"
}
expiration {
days = 365
}
}
}
locals {
common_tags = {
Environment = "production"
Project = "my-project"
CostCenter = "engineering"
Owner = "team@example.com"
ManagedBy = "terraform"
}
}
resource "aws_instance" "example" {
ami = "ami-12345678"
instance_type = "t3.medium"
tags = merge(
local.common_tags,
{
Name = "web-server"
}
)
}
Reference: See references/tagging-standards.md
# AWS Budget
resource "aws_budgets_budget" "monthly" {
name = "monthly-budget"
budget_type = "COST"
limit_amount = "1000"
limit_unit = "USD"
time_period_start = "2024-01-01_00:00"
time_unit = "MONTHLY"
notification {
comparison_operator = "GREATER_THAN"
threshold = 80
threshold_type = "PERCENTAGE"
notification_type = "ACTUAL"
subscriber_email_addresses = ["team@example.com"]
}
}
Development: t3.small RDS
Staging: t3.large RDS
Production: r6g.2xlarge RDS with read replicas
Hot data: S3 Standard
Warm data: S3 Standard-IA (30 days)
Cold data: S3 Glacier (90 days)
Archive: S3 Deep Archive (365 days)
resource "aws_autoscaling_policy" "scale_up" {
name = "scale-up"
scaling_adjustment = 2
adjustment_type = "ChangeInCapacity"
cooldown = 300
autoscaling_group_name = aws_autoscaling_group.main.name
}
resource "aws_cloudwatch_metric_alarm" "cpu_high" {
alarm_name = "cpu-high"
comparison_operator = "GreaterThanThreshold"
evaluation_periods = "2"
metric_name = "CPUUtilization"
namespace = "AWS/EC2"
period = "60"
statistic = "Average"
threshold = "80"
alarm_actions = [aws_autoscaling_policy.scale_up.arn]
}
references/tagging-standards.md - Tagging conventionsassets/cost-analysis-template.xlsx - Cost analysis spreadsheetterraform-module-library - For resource provisioningmulti-cloud-architecture - For cloud selectionInstall via CLI
npx mdskills install sickn33/cost-optimizationCost Optimization is a free, open-source AI agent skill. Optimize cloud costs through resource rightsizing, tagging strategies, reserved instances, and spending analysis. Use when reducing cloud expenses, analyzing infrastructure costs, or implementing cost governance policies.
Install Cost Optimization with a single command:
npx mdskills install sickn33/cost-optimizationThis downloads the skill files into your project and your AI agent picks them up automatically.
Cost Optimization works with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Vscode Copilot, Windsurf, Continue Dev, Codex, Gemini Cli, Amp, Roo Code, Goose, Opencode, Trae, Qodo, Command Code. Skills use the open SKILL.md format which is compatible with any AI coding agent that reads markdown instructions.