Cost anomaly detection

Overview

Catch a cloud cost spike the day it happens, not the day the invoice lands. A daily cron re-prompts ONE persistent session; this skill turns AWS Cost Explorer's raw daily spend into a per-service/per-account baseline that sharpens over time, flags whatever breaks out of it, and attributes a likely driver so the alert is something a human can act on immediately — not just a number that moved.

Proactive and schedule-driven; strictly read-only and alert-only.

When to load

• The daily cron fires the cost-anomaly sweep.
• A human asks the agent for current spend anomalies or why a specific service or account alerted.
• A human asks the agent to note a known/planned spend pattern so it stops being flagged.

Workflow

Step 0 — Orient and resume

Read the durable ledger first — the current per-service/per-account baseline, the last date it was updated, prior anomalies and how they resolved, and any noted seasonal or planned patterns to exclude:

.kortix/memory/cloud-cost-baseline.md

This is a reuse session re-prompted daily, not a fresh session — the baseline is cumulative. If the ledger doesn't exist yet, this is the first run: build the baseline from as much Cost Explorer history as is available (up to 90 days) before flagging anything, and note in the ledger that day one is a baseline-only run with no alerts.

Step 1 — Pull the prior day's spend (read-only)

Query AWS Cost Explorer, read-only, for the most recently closed day (Cost Explorer data typically settles ~24h behind), grouped by:

• Service (e.g. EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, data transfer)
• Linked account (for multi-account setups)

Pull both the cost amount and, where available, the usage quantity (so a price-driven versus usage-driven change can be told apart later).

Step 2 — Update the baseline

For every service/account pair seen, fold the new data point into its running baseline (trailing mean and spread over the last ~30 days is a reasonable default absent a memory override). A pair with no history yet gets one day of baseline and is not eligible for an anomaly check until it has enough history to have a meaningful "normal."

Step 3 — Detect spend that breaks the baseline

Compare each service/account's new data point against its own updated baseline — never a flat, cross-service dollar threshold. Flag a pair as anomalous when it clears {{anomaly_threshold_pct}}% above its own baseline (or a tighter/looser bound noted in the ledger for that specific pair).

Step 4 — Attribute the likely driver

For each anomaly, look at what changed underneath the number before writing the alert:

• New resource — a resource ID that first appears in the window's resource-level detail (new instance, new volume, new function).
• Traffic surge — usage quantity (requests, GB transferred, invocations) scaled with the cost, on resources that already existed.
• Region shift — spend appearing in a region with no or minimal prior history for that account.
• Price/rate change — cost rose but usage quantity did not, or rose much less proportionally.

State the driver as a best guess with the evidence, not a certainty — e.g. "cost is up 62% vs. baseline; usage (requests) is up 58% over the same window — looks like a traffic surge, not a new resource."

Step 5 — Post the alert

Post one Slack message per anomaly to {{alert_channel}} (or one message covering all of the day's anomalies if there is more than one — never zero messages folded into a "nothing to report" post; if nothing is anomalous, post nothing). Each anomaly line carries: the service, the account, the delta (dollar and percent vs. baseline), and the suspected driver with its evidence. Never write to AWS — the Slack post is the only output.

Step 6 — Update the ledger

Update .kortix/memory/cloud-cost-baseline.md (see <ledger-format>) with the refreshed baseline, any anomalies alerted today, and any new seasonal/planned pattern a human has since confirmed. Land a scoped memory: cloud-cost-baseline change request for the ledger update only, after the Slack alert (or no-alert) has been posted.

<ledger-format> Lives at .kortix/memory/cloud-cost-baseline.md. Keep one section per service/account pair with: the current baseline (trailing mean + spread, and the window it's computed over), the last-updated date, and a running note of whether it's stable or has an active anomaly. Below that, keep a dated Anomalies log (date / service / account / delta / suspected driver / alerted-to) and a Known patterns list (service / account / pattern description / who confirmed it) for spend spikes to stop flagging. Trim anomaly log entries older than 90 days. </ledger-format>

Guardrails

• Read-only, always. The AWS connector is read-only. Never launch, modify, or delete a resource, and never change a budget or spending control, even if the credential would technically allow it.
• One alert channel. {{alert_channel}} is the only output. No emails, no tickets, no AWS API writes.
• Alert only on a real break. Don't alert on a pair with insufficient baseline history, and don't re-alert on a pattern already confirmed and noted as known/planned in the ledger.
• Scoped secrets. AWS access is brokered server-side through the connector; no raw credential is ever pasted into chat.
• People decide, not the agent. The alert states the delta and a suspected driver; a human decides whether and how to respond. The agent never resizes, stops, or deletes anything to "fix" a spike.