# Cost Optimization

Audit and reduce infrastructure and tooling costs without sacrificing reliability or...

- Repository: https://github.com/rampstackco/claude-skills (1014 stars)
- Category: DevOps
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2026-10-27
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill cost-optimization -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill cost-optimization -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill cost-optimization -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill cost-optimization -g -a gemini-cli -y`
Claude Code plugin marketplace: `/plugin marketplace add rampstackco/claude-skills`

## Description

Audit and reduce infrastructure and tooling costs without sacrificing reliability or velocity. Use this skill when reviewing monthly cloud or SaaS spend, finding unused resources, rightsizing infrastructure, negotiating vendor contracts, deciding what to consolidate, or planning for budget cuts. Triggers on cost optimization, cloud spend, SaaS spend, rightsizing, unused resources, FinOps, infrastructure audit, vendor consolidation, budget cut, cost review. Also triggers when finance flags rising costs or when a contract renewal is up.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Cost Optimization

Audit cloud, SaaS, and infrastructure spend. Cut what's not earning its keep. Rightsize what's oversized. Negotiate what's negotiable. Without breaking what works.

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## When to use

- Quarterly or annual cost review
- Finance flags rising spend
- Vendor contract renewal coming up
- Budget cut required
- New leadership wants the numbers
- Migrating between providers (cost is part of the case)
- Audit before scaling significantly (catch waste before it scales)

## When NOT to use

- Active incident response (use `incident-response`)
- Performance issues that happen to involve infrastructure (use `performance-optimization`)
- Vendor evaluation for a new purchase (use `vendor-evaluation`)
- Personnel or org costs (out of scope for this skill)

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## Required inputs

- Current cost (monthly, ideally for the last 12 months)
- Cost broken down by service or vendor
- Inventory of cloud resources (instances, databases, storage, etc.)
- Inventory of SaaS subscriptions
- Owners per cost line (who decided to spend this, who uses it)
- Constraints (compliance, performance, contract terms)

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## The framework: 5 levers

Every cost optimization opportunity falls into one of these levers.

### Lever 1: Eliminate

Stop paying for things that aren't used.

- Idle resources (instances, databases, environments running but unused)
- Subscriptions where no one logs in
- Duplicate tools (multiple tools doing the same job)
- Old projects still incurring cost
- Test environments that should have been torn down
- Forgotten domains, backups, snapshots, logs

This is usually the largest opportunity in the first audit. Often 10-30% of spend.

### Lever 2: Rightsize

Pay for what you actually use, not what you provisioned for the worst case three years ago.

The rest: https://github.com/rampstackco/claude-skills/blob/HEAD/dist/codex/.agents/skills/cost-optimization/SKILL.md