llms.txt

# Cloud FinOps Skill & MCP - by OptimNow

> Expert Cloud FinOps knowledge for AI agents. Model-agnostic: works with Claude, GPT, Gemini, or any LLM. Also published as an MCP server (`cloud-finops-mcp`) for faceted retrieval.

A structured knowledge skill that gives AI agents accurate Cloud FinOps expertise.
It covers billing mechanics, pricing models, commitment discounts, AI cost management,
allocation and chargeback, anomaly management, Kubernetes FinOps, waste detection,
tagging governance, and optimisation patterns across AWS, Azure, GCP, AI platforms,
and major data platforms.

The skill is plain markdown - no vector database, no embedding pipeline, no retrieval
infrastructure. Copy the files into your agent's context and it gains FinOps expertise.

Price figures are deliberately not carried here: they go stale inside a packaged
artefact. Billing mechanics live in these files; live rates come from the AI Pricing
Hub at https://optimtoken.optimnow.io.

## Entry points

- [SKILL.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/SKILL.md): Entry point and domain router for Claude Code and generic agents
- [POWER.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/POWER.md): Entry point for Kiro IDE
- [INSTALLATION.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/INSTALLATION.md): cross-tool installer covering 12 tool integrations + model-agnostic response contract

## References

- [optimnow-methodology.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/optimnow-methodology.md): Reasoning philosophy (load in full for strategy and engagement-design questions)
- [finops-for-ai.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-for-ai.md): AI cost management, token economics, agentic patterns
- [finops-agentic.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-agentic.md): Agentic FinOps - agent cost anatomy, cost-safe architecture, agent-initiated payments (x402/MPP)
- [finops-ai-value-management.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-ai-value-management.md): AI investment governance, stage gates
- [finops-genai-capacity.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-genai-capacity.md): Provisioned vs shared capacity, cross-provider
- [finops-ai-self-hosted-vs-managed.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-ai-self-hosted-vs-managed.md): Self-hosted vs managed AI inference decisioning
- [finops-open-weight-vendors.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-open-weight-vendors.md): Open-weight vendor hosted APIs (DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, GLM) - channels, rate mechanics, licensing
- [finops-ai-dev-tools.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-ai-dev-tools.md): AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, Codex, Windsurf)
- [finops-anthropic.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-anthropic.md): Anthropic/Claude billing and governance
- [finops-aws.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-aws.md): AWS FinOps core (EC2 rightsizing, CUR and Data Exports, SageMaker, cost allocation, governance)
- [finops-aws-commitments.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-aws-commitments.md): AWS Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, Spot, commitment decision tree, portfolio liquidity, EDP negotiation
- [finops-aws-patterns.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-aws-patterns.md): AWS enumerated per-service optimisation pattern catalogue
- [finops-bedrock.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-bedrock.md): AWS Bedrock billing and optimisation
- [finops-azure.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-azure.md): Azure FinOps core (Cost Management exports, rightsizing, AKS, Log Analytics, storage, networking, Azure Policy)
- [finops-azure-commitments.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-azure-commitments.md): Azure Reservations, Savings Plans, AHB, commitment decision trees, portfolio liquidity, phased purchasing, MACC
- [finops-azure-patterns.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-azure-patterns.md): Azure enumerated per-service optimisation pattern catalogue
- [finops-azure-openai.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-azure-openai.md): Azure OpenAI Service (PTUs, spillover, costs)
- [finops-gcp.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-gcp.md): GCP FinOps (Compute, BigQuery, networking)
- [finops-vertexai.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-vertexai.md): GCP Vertex AI billing and optimisation
- [finops-tagging.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-tagging.md): Tagging governance and naming conventions
- [finops-framework.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-framework.md): FinOps Foundation framework and maturity model
- [finops-databricks.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-databricks.md): Databricks cost optimisation, allocation, DBCU commitments
- [finops-fabric.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-fabric.md): Microsoft Fabric capacity FinOps (F-SKU, CU smoothing)
- [finops-snowflake.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-snowflake.md): Snowflake cost optimisation
- [finops-oci.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-oci.md): Oracle Cloud Infrastructure optimisation
- [finops-sam.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-sam.md): SaaS asset management
- [finops-itam.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-itam.md): ITAM collaboration (BYOL, marketplace, vendor co-management)
- [greenops-cloud-carbon.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/greenops-cloud-carbon.md): Cloud carbon measurement and GreenOps
- [finops-anomaly-management.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-anomaly-management.md): Cost anomaly management as standalone capability
- [finops-kpis-benchmarking.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-kpis-benchmarking.md): KPIs, unit economics, benchmarking, executive reporting
- [finops-allocation-showback.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-allocation-showback.md): Cost allocation methodology and showback
- [finops-chargeback.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-chargeback.md): Chargeback maturity, Finance/accounting prerequisites
- [finops-onboarding-workloads.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-onboarding-workloads.md): Migration-time cost hygiene, M&A integration
- [finops-kubernetes.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-kubernetes.md): Kubernetes FinOps (EKS / GKE / AKS) cross-cluster discipline
- [finops-waste-detection-playbooks.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/references/finops-waste-detection-playbooks.md): Eight-category waste taxonomy + WasteLine

## Playbooks

- [playbooks/README.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/skills/cloud-finops/playbooks/README.md): index of the named-pattern runbooks, with the frontmatter schema and the full catalogue table
- [playbooks/](https://github.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/blob/main/skills/cloud-finops/playbooks/): RAG-friendly named-pattern runbooks (~3-8 KB each, average ~5 KB, Problem/Symptoms/Detection/Fix/Anti-pattern/See also format) covering AWS, Azure, GCP, and cross-cloud waste patterns

## Optional

- [llms-full.txt](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/llms-full.txt): the entire library (entry point, all references, all playbooks) inlined in one file, for ingesting everything in a single fetch instead of following every link above

- [DEPENDENCIES.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills/main/DEPENDENCIES.md): cross-repo dependency map for the five OptimNow repos, and which repos a change ripples into
- [Repository](https://github.com/OptimNow/cloud-finops-skills): source, installer, and MCP server
- [MCP server on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/cloud-finops-mcp/): `pip install cloud-finops-mcp`
- [Hosted MCP endpoint](https://cloud-finops-skills-590a051d.alpic.live/mcp): streamable HTTP, nothing to install
- [OptimNow](https://optimnow.io): the authors. Content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0