costory-io Recipes
A recipe is a ready-made design for a common FinOps tracking goal — scope, split, period, widgets, delivery — as a payload skeleton, then a hand off to the mechanics skill (reports, dashboards, virtual-dimensions, query). Recipes never restate full delivery safety or live schema edge cases; fill placeholders after confirm, then build with the mechanics skill.
How to use this skill
- Match the user's goal using Pick a recipe below (triggers + "not this if").
- Read only that one file under
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/. - Run the card's Tool sequence through confirm gates — do not fire mutation/delivery tools until confirmed.
- Fill
[PLACEHOLDERS]from discovery + user answers; keep frozen fields as written. - Restate the Brief, then hand off the filled skeleton to the named mechanics skill.
- If nothing matches → fall through to
reports(or the relevant mechanics skill) and design from scratch.
Skeleton contract
Every card has:
| Section | Role |
|---|---|
| When / Audience / Outcome | routing + what "done" looks like |
| Tool sequence | ordered Costory MCP tool names (discover → confirm → preview → create) |
| Payload skeleton | JSON-shaped dashboardContext or reportContext / widgets / optional query with frozen defaults + [PLACEHOLDERS] |
| Confirm before build | gates that must be answered before preview/create/NOW/SCHEDULED |
| Gotchas | recipe-specific traps only |
| Brief | one-line restatement |
| Hand off | which mechanics skill owns the filled payload |
Placeholders are never invented: resolve via get_context, search, suggest_groupby, list_available_destinations, VDIM publish, or the user. Currency comes from get_context.
Pick a recipe
Read the matching file. Do not improvise a blend of two cards until the user asks to combine them.
| If the user means… | Signals (phrases / audience) | You get | Not this if… | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Why did spend move? (one-shot) | "why did the bill jump", "what changed last month", "explain the spike", finance-review prep — ad-hoc, not recurring | preview_report_widget DIGEST change tree (chat-first; not query+compare); ± optional AI |
standing weekly/monthly channel report → Schedule recipe; explorer PoP totals only → query Workflow B |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/explain-period-change.md |
| Marketplace / vendor spend | "marketplace", "private offer", "third-party on the cloud bill", "spend by seller/issuer" — Finance / procurement | Monthly marketplace-only trend + top vendors by cos_invoice_issuer |
native cloud usage (EC2 etc.) — wrong recipe | plugins/costory/skills/recipes/marketplace-spend.md |
| K8s cost per namespace | "namespace", "EKS/GKE", "cluster showback", platform/DevOps weekly | Weekly reallocated-namespace trend + top/flop | env or account rollup without namespaces → service-cost-weekly or env-costs-cto |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/namespace-cost.md |
| Credits / discounts runway | "credits burning", "savings plan / CUDs", "promotional credits", "discount lines", charge category | Monthly charge-category trend + movers | GCP spend CUD leftover / utilization → gcp-spend-cud; usage-by-service view → service-cost-weekly |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/provider-credits.md |
| GCP spend-based CUD | "spend-based CUD", "Flexible CUD", "leftover fee", "CUD utilization / coverage", "GCP Spend-Based Commitments" | Teach spend CUDs + point at that dashboard + leftover / hourly / project questions | invoice credit runway → provider-credits; resource-based CUD only → query |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/gcp-spend-cud.md |
| BigQuery warehouse | "BigQuery costs", "physical vs logical", "slot leftover", "load jobs on reservation", "dbt model cost", "no BQ labels" | Teach SKU caveats + open [BigQuery] BigQuery Dashboard + allocate / optimize | GCP spend CUD leftover → gcp-spend-cud; generic Explorer → query |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/bigquery.md (then get_skill bigquery) |
| Weekly eng FinOps pulse | "weekly by env and service", "weekly pulse", "what moved per service" — eng/FinOps, actionable drivers | Weekly graph + DIGEST env/account → service, AI on | exec-only "prod vs staging" one number → env-costs-cto; one-shot "why did it jump" → explain |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/service-cost-weekly.md |
| Tagging / allocation coverage | "untagged", "tag coverage", "missing team/env tag", "can't allocate the bill" | tagged / all ratio trend + worst services (formula via query first) |
absolute spend by tag value (that's a normal split, not coverage) | plugins/costory/skills/recipes/untagged-coverage.md |
| Exec cost per environment | "CTO wants env costs", "prod vs non-prod", leadership monthly readout — simple, not drill-down | Monthly top envs (no flop) ± yearly graph; build env VDIM first |
weekly service drivers / AI narrative → service-cost-weekly; one-shot explore → prod-vs-rnd-explore |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/env-costs-cto.md |
| Reallocate by external metric | "split shared cost by usage", "unit economics then allocate", "showback by requests/revenue/CPU", proportional fair share | Validate cost ÷ metric in query, then telemetry VDIM publish |
simple cost ÷ metric KPI only (no reallocation) → query Workflow E; fixed 60/40 weights → virtual-dimensions splitCost |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/reallocate-by-external-metric.md |
| Explore Prod vs R&D | "explain Prod vs R&D", "how much is production vs research" — ad-hoc split | Composition (and optional MoM) on published env / Prod-R&D bqName |
no axis yet → prod-vs-rnd-vdim; standing monthly exec report → env-costs-cto |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/prod-vs-rnd-explore.md |
| Budget vs actual daily | "budget vs actual per day", "daily burn vs budget", "on pace this month?" — dashboard | Daily cumulated cost + budget (+ optional utilization) dashboard | one-shot numbers only → query Workflow F |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/budget-vs-actual-dashboard.md |
| Credits received YTD | "how much credits this year", "YTD promotional credits" — explore total | YTD credit total + charge-category breakdown | standing monthly runway / movers → provider-credits |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/credits-ytd-explore.md |
| EC2 +10% spike alert | "warn if AmazonEC2 up >10%", "EC2 spike alert", "notify on EC2 WoW jump" | Alert: 7-day sum > prior 7-day × 1.1 (preview then create) | dashboard/report trend without notify → dashboards / reports |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/ec2-cost-spike-alert.md |
| Build Prod vs R&D VDIM | "virtual dimension for prod vs R&D", "map production from research costs" — axis first | Draft → preview → publish Production / R&D rules | already have the axis and want numbers → prod-vs-rnd-explore; exec schedule → env-costs-cto |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/prod-vs-rnd-vdim.md |
| Compute drill-down dimension | "what dimension for compute", "best groupBy for EC2/VMs", "break down compute spend" | Scoped suggest_groupby + sample query; ranked axes |
they already named the axis and want a dashboard → dashboards |
plugins/costory/skills/recipes/compute-drilldown-dimension.md |
Quick disambiguation
| Sound alike | Prefer |
|---|---|
| "cost per environment" from a CTO / VP (monthly, simple) | env-costs-cto |
| "cost per environment and service" / weekly eng pulse | service-cost-weekly |
| "explain Prod vs R&D" once vs build the VDIM vs monthly Slack | prod-vs-rnd-explore / prod-vs-rnd-vdim / env-costs-cto |
| "what changed?" once vs every week/month in Slack | explain-period-change (DIGEST preview) vs the Schedule recipe that matches the topic |
| "what changed?" drivers tree vs explorer PoP numbers | explain-period-change vs query Workflow B |
| "untagged spend $" vs "tag coverage %" | raw untagged $ can be a scoped query; coverage campaign → untagged-coverage |
| "cost per request" KPI vs reallocate shared spend by requests | unit economics only → query; proportional split → reallocate-by-external-metric |
| "credits this year" total vs credits runway report | credits-ytd-explore vs provider-credits |
| GCP spend CUD leftover / utilization vs charge-category credit runway | gcp-spend-cud vs provider-credits |
| GCP BigQuery warehouse (Analysis / slots / storage) vs spend CUD leftover | bigquery vs gcp-spend-cud |
| "budget vs actual" dashboard vs quick Explorer numbers | budget-vs-actual-dashboard vs query Workflow F |
Notes on presets
Cards use real datePreset tokens (LAST_MONTH, LAST_WEEK, LAST_INVOICE_MONTH, TRAILING_14_WEEKS, LAST_12_MONTHS, MTD, YTD, TRAILING_90_DAYS) — all drawn from the DatePreset enum. The enum has exactly 16 values; the query skill lists the full authoritative set (also: QTD, LAST_3_MONTHS, LAST_6_MONTHS, LAST_4_YEARS, TRAILING_3_DAYS, TRAILING_7_DAYS, TRAILING_30_DAYS, TRAILING_45_DAYS). If a card needs a range no token covers, use explicit from/to rather than inventing a preset — the server rejects unknown tokens with -32602.
Adding a recipe
One file in plugins/costory/skills/recipes/ + one row in Pick a recipe (triggers, outcome, "not this if"). Card format:
When · Audience · Outcome · Tool sequence · Payload skeleton · Confirm before build · Gotchas · Brief · Hand off