Skills

Skill 1 of 53

AKS Cost Optimization

Analyze advanced AKS cost efficiency. WHEN: “AKS NAP readiness”, “AKS bin packing”, “AKS node scaling bottleneck”, “AKS blocked scale-down”, “AKS storage cost”.

1 minute · 143 words · 4 sections

Install

$ npx skills add microsoft/azure-skills --skill aks-cost-optimization

$ npx skills add microsoft/azure-skills

» /plugin marketplace add microsoft/azure-skills

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

When to Use This Skill

Use for advanced existing-cluster analysis requiring scheduling, placement, or verified storage mapping. Route overall AKS cost assessments to azure-kubernetes, spend/anomalies to cost-analysis, commitments to cost-optimization, and incidents to aks-troubleshooting when those skills are available. When called from an overall assessment, return findings for its ranked report.

MCP Tools

Prefer fitting Azure MCP reads. Never invent tools or use az/kubectl without approved shell access and a target-bound context.

Workflow/Steps

Bind the subscription, cluster, resource group, and kube context.
Route to NAP readiness (opens in a new tab), bin-packing (opens in a new tab), node-scaling bottlenecks (opens in a new tab), or storage optimization (opens in a new tab).
When invoked for AKS commitment context, use the commitment-demand handoff (opens in a new tab) and return demand evidence without benefit analysis or a transaction.
Keep reads non-mutating; require approval for every change.

Error Handling

Missing capability: analyze supplied evidence or provide a collection plan; mark dependent cost or commitment results unavailable.
Evidence conflict: mark the conclusion unconfirmed.

About this skill

Trigger

Analyze advanced AKS cost efficiency. WHEN: "AKS NAP readiness", "AKS bin packing", "AKS node scaling bottleneck", "AKS blocked scale-down", "AKS storage cost". DO NOT USE AS DIRECT ENTRY FOR: overall AKS cost assessments or rightsizing/VPA/CAS/Spot (azure-kubernetes); spend/anomalies/commitments (cost-analysis/cost-optimization); incidents (aks-troubleshooting).

The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.

Licence: MIT
Source: .github/plugins/aks-skills/skills/aks-cost-optimization/SKILL.md

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How this issue was made

Source

github.com/microsoft/azure-skills, branch main, last pushed 6 November 2026.

Licence

MIT — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

53 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 11 distinct layouts observed: .github/plugins/aks-skills/skills/*/SKILL.md, .github/plugins/azure-advisor/skills/*/SKILL.md, .github/plugins/azure-cost/skills/*/SKILL.md, .github/plugins/azure-kusto-graph-skills/skills/*/SKILL.md, .github/plugins/azure-local-skills/skills/*/SKILL.md, .github/plugins/foundry-iq-skills/skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/azure-kubernetes/*/SKILL.md, skills/microsoft-foundry/*/SKILL.md, skills/microsoft-foundry/models/deploy-model/*/SKILL.md, skills/microsoft-foundry/models/*/SKILL.md.

Duplicates collapsed

35 mirror copies folded into their canonical skill — republished for GitHub. Copies match on content hash and on position once a leading per-agent prefix is stripped, because the same skill is routinely shipped under a dozen agent directories with a dozen different hashes.

Issue colours

Resolved from a curated brand profile — hue 251°, chroma 0.167. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Removed “AKS Cost Optimization”, a leading h1 that duplicated the skill title.

Spec compliance

Every skill satisfies the Agent Skills specification’s frontmatter rules.

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Microsoft, declaring 7 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /microsoft/azure-skills.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

Bind the subscription, cluster, resource group, and kube context.
Route to NAP readiness (opens in a new tab), bin-packing (opens in a new tab), node-scaling bottlenecks (opens in a new tab), or storage optimization (opens in a new tab).
When invoked for AKS commitment context, use the commitment-demand handoff (opens in a new tab) and return demand evidence without benefit analysis or a transaction.
Keep reads non-mutating; require approval for every change.

Error Handling

Missing capability: analyze supplied evidence or provide a collection plan; mark dependent cost or commitment results unavailable.
Evidence conflict: mark the conclusion unconfirmed.

AKS Cost Optimization

When to Use This Skill

MCP Tools

Workflow/Steps

Error Handling

About this skill

Trigger

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AKS Cost Optimization

When to Use This Skill

MCP Tools

Workflow/Steps

Error Handling

Appendix 1.1–1.13

ReferencesMarkdown · 13 files

About this skill

Trigger

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Appendix 1.1–1.13

ReferencesMarkdown · 13 files