---
name: cost-governance
description: "Govern Azure costs with budgets, alerts, tags, and policy restrictions. WHEN: \"Azure budget health\", \"configured budget overrun\", \"list Azure budgets\", \"create Azure budget\", \"budget alerts\", \"budget coverage\", \"missing CostCenter tags\", \"allowed VM SKUs\", \"allowed Azure regions\", \"would this SKU be denied\", \"cost guardrails\". DO NOT USE FOR: planning-target forecasts, bill investigations, pricing, rightsizing, or commitments."
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Microsoft
  version: "1.0.1"
---

# Cost Governance

## Quick Reference

| Intent | Workflow | Primary tools |
|--------|----------|---------------|
| Check budget status | [Budget health](references/budget-health.md) | `list_budgets`, `forecast_costs`, `query_costs`, `list_alerts` |
| Configure a budget | [Budget setup](references/budget-setup.md) | Cost tools, `create_budget` |
| Review guardrails | [Guardrails](references/guardrails.md) | Resource Graph, `list_budgets` |

## When to Use This Skill

Use for budgets, alerts, tags, and policy.

## MCP Tools

Use cost tools for budgets; Resource Graph for guardrails. Writes need
confirmed scope, amount, thresholds, and recipients. Fallback:
[API mappings](references/tool-fallback.md).

## Workflow

1. Confirm scope and load the matching workflow.
2. Never transform MCP results in a shell or interpreter; request tool-side
   filtering or bounded follow-up queries.
3. Distinguish access failures from empty results.
4. Report gaps without implying budgets cap spend.

## Error Handling

| Error | Action |
|-------|--------|
| Access denied | Name missing permission. |
| No budget or forecast | Report unavailable data, not zero. |
| Multiple currencies | Never sum or compare across currencies. |
| Write conflict | Preserve the budget. |
| Server error | Retry once; then stop with the trace ID. |