Cloud Bill Spike Analyzer

Free v1.0.0

Diagnose unexpected AWS, GCP, or Azure cost increases with structured root cause analysis, investigation steps, and prevention measures.

What You Get

Eliminates panic and hours of debugging by providing systematic root cause analysis with specific CLI commands, likely causes ranked by probability, and step-by-step resolution for cloud bill spikes.

The Problem

Bootstrapped SaaS founders experience 'bill shock' - unexpected cloud cost increases that they can't explain or diagnose quickly. AWS Cost Explorer is complex and overwhelming, bills are delayed 24-48 hours so spikes aren't caught immediately, founders don't know which services to investigate first, multiple changes may have happened making root cause unclear, and panic leads to wasted debugging time. Real founders report: 'Got an unexpected $85K bill from Google Cloud', 'We spent 80% of revenue on cloud costs', 'AWS bill capping feature request - 10 years old, still unanswered'.

The Solution

This skill provides a diagnostic framework based on common cloud cost spike patterns. For each scenario, it categorizes the spike type (data transfer, database, compute, storage), provides investigation framework with Cost Explorer navigation steps, lists AWS/GCP/Azure CLI commands to identify the source and verify diagnosis, explains cost drivers for the affected service with rate tables, ranks likely causes based on spike magnitude and patterns, gives resolution steps with specific commands and safety checks, and sets up prevention with budget alerts and anomaly detection. The output is a structured diagnostic report optimized for bootstrapped founders with limited DevOps experience.

How It Works

  1. 1 Parse user context to extract bill amounts, percentage increase, suspected service, timeframe, recent changes, cloud provider, and technical background
  2. 2 Categorize spike type into service-specific (data transfer, RDS, EC2, S3, Lambda) or general spike requiring systematic investigation
  3. 3 Build diagnostic report with initial assessment, cost breakdown framework for the service, investigation steps with Cost Explorer navigation and CLI commands
  4. 4 Rank 3-5 likely root causes by probability based on spike patterns (e.g., Multi-AZ enabled, storage auto-scaled, reserved instance expired)
  5. 5 Provide resolution steps for each likely cause with verification commands, resolution commands with safety warnings, and expected cost impact
  6. 6 Add prevention measures categorized as immediate (set up today), this week, and long-term with specific CLI commands for billing alerts and anomaly detection
  7. 7 Include 'What NOT to Do' section with warnings about destructive actions, over-reactions, and common mistakes

What You'll Need

  • User provides bill context: previous vs. current amounts, timeframe, suspected service (if known), recent changes, cloud provider
  • Access to WebSearch for researching current CLI syntax and best practices
  • Access to WebFetch for fetching official AWS/GCP/Azure documentation

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