--- title: Cloud Cost Skill in Bits Chat description: >- Use the Cloud Cost skill in Bits Chat to investigate, explain, and share cloud cost findings. breadcrumbs: Docs > Cloud Cost Management > Cloud Cost Skill in Bits Chat --- # Cloud Cost Skill in Bits Chat ## Overview{% #overview %} The Cloud Cost skill is the Cloud Cost Management analysis workflow in [Bits Chat](https://docs.datadoghq.com/bits_ai/bits_chat.md). It is designed for FinOps tasks, such as root cause analysis, budget tracking, and answering general cost questions. For example, you can ask Bits Chat to: - Investigate [cost monitor alerts](https://app.datadoghq.com/cost/monitor/monitors), [cost anomalies](https://app.datadoghq.com/cost/monitor/anomalies), and [cost changes](https://app.datadoghq.com/cost/summarize/overview) - Identify teams, services, accounts, regions, or resources driving spend - Answer ad hoc questions about cloud, SaaS, custom, or Datadog costs - Compare actual spend and forecasts against [budgets](https://app.datadoghq.com/cost/plan/budgets) - Correlate cost changes with observability metrics, such as CPU, memory, request volume, or storage size - Create [Notebooks](https://docs.datadoghq.com/notebooks.md) that capture an investigation for handoff or future reference ## Prerequisites{% #prerequisites %} To use the Cloud Cost skill in Bits Chat, you must: - [Set up Cloud Cost Management](https://docs.datadoghq.com/cloud_cost_management/setup.md) for the cost sources you want to analyze - Have these permissions: - [Bits Chat Access](https://docs.datadoghq.com/account_management/rbac/permissions.md#bits-assistant) permission - [Cloud Cost Management permissions](https://docs.datadoghq.com/cloud_cost_management/setup/permissions.md) for the data you ask about - (Optional) [Notebook permissions](https://docs.datadoghq.com/account_management/rbac/permissions.md#notebooks), if you want to create or edit investigation [Notebooks](https://docs.datadoghq.com/notebooks.md) ## Start an investigation with the Cloud Cost skill{% #start-an-investigation-with-the-cloud-cost-skill %} {% image source="https://docs.dd-static.net/images/cloud_cost/cc_skill_anomalies.5124dde8ebba47c09eca5b83d0977fcf.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=850 1x, https://docs.dd-static.net/images/cloud_cost/cc_skill_anomalies.5124dde8ebba47c09eca5b83d0977fcf.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=850&dpr=2 2x" alt="Cost anomalies graphs showing the Investigate with Bits AI button in each graph." /%} When you want to start an investigation, such as for a [cost anomaly](https://app.datadoghq.com/cost/monitor/anomalies), click Investigate or (the twinkling stars icon) to open the Cloud Cost skill. Alternatively, you can click Ask Bits on the top right of the navigation bar on any Datadog page to open Bits Chat and ask a cost question. Example prompts: - `Investigate why EC2 costs increased last week for team:payments.` - `Which teams are responsible for the highest S3 storage costs this month?` - `Why is the infrastructure budget projected to go over this month?` - `Show total cloud cost by provider for the last 30 complete days.` - `Find optimization opportunities for idle or over-provisioned cloud infrastructure.` ### Cost change investigations{% #cost-change-investigations %} When you investigate a cost change with the Cloud Cost skill, Bits Chat provides a concise summary, then asks what you want to explore next. The initial analysis typically includes: - A daily cost chart for the baseline and investigation periods - The baseline period, investigation period, total dollar amount and percentage change, and projected annual impact when applicable - Rate-versus-usage context to help distinguish price changes from consumption changes - Owner or team attribution based on your cost tags {% image source="https://docs.dd-static.net/images/cloud_cost/cc_skill_cost_summary.bbf980ebc544e38c760fd4676c80da26.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=850 1x, https://docs.dd-static.net/images/cloud_cost/cc_skill_cost_summary.bbf980ebc544e38c760fd4676c80da26.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=850&dpr=2 2x" alt="Bits Chat's investigation summary showing an initial analysis." /%} After the initial summary, Bits Chat can: - Find the top services, accounts, regions, resources, or tags driving the change - Correlate the cost change with metrics such as CPU requests, memory requests, request count, bucket size, or database usage - Find related budgets and compare actual or forecasted spend against budget targets - Create a Datadog Notebook for the team that owns the service to confirm and act on findings - Capture the investigation for your records in a Notebook ### Budgets and forecasting{% #budgets-and-forecasting %} After setting up [Budgets](https://app.datadoghq.com/cost/plan/budgets), use the Cloud Cost skill in Bits Chat to explain budget status and spending. Bits Chat can help summarize: - Actual spend versus budgeted amount - Forecasted spend versus budgeted amount - Which cost scope a budget covers, based on the budget's filters - Which budget entries, teams, services, or providers are contributing to an overage After the initial summary, Bits Chat can: - Find the top services, accounts, regions, resources, or tags driving spending - Identify the teams that own the resources contributing to the cost change - Update your budget - Capture the investigation for your records in a Notebook ## Use the Datadog MCP Server for cost analysis{% #use-the-datadog-mcp-server-for-cost-analysis %} The [Datadog MCP Server](https://docs.datadoghq.com/mcp_server.md) lets external AI agents query Datadog data. This is useful when you want to ask cost questions from an IDE, terminal-based assistant, or custom AI workflow. To use an external AI agent, [set up the Datadog MCP Server](https://docs.datadoghq.com/mcp_server/setup.md). If your MCP client filters toolsets, include the `core` toolset to use the metric tools that can query Cloud Cost Management data. Cloud Cost Management data is available through the core metric tools: | MCP tool | Usage | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [`get_datadog_metric`](https://docs.datadoghq.com/mcp_server/tools.md#get_datadog_metric) | Query cost metrics, compare periods, and group costs by provider, service, team, account, resource, or tag. | | [`get_datadog_metric_context`](https://docs.datadoghq.com/mcp_server/tools.md#get_datadog_metric_context) | Discover metadata, available tag keys, and tag values for a cost metric before querying it. | Ask your agent to set `use_cloud_cost` to `true` for Cloud Cost Management metrics, such as `all.cost`, `aws.cost.*`, `azure.cost.*`, `gcp.cost.*`, `oci.cost.*`, `custom.cost.*`, or `datadog.cost.*`. For observability metrics that explain a cost change, such as Kubernetes CPU or S3 bucket size, use the standard metric query behavior. Example prompts for MCP-connected agents: - `Use Datadog MCP to query cloud cost data. Set use_cloud_cost=true and show daily all.cost grouped by provider for the last 30 complete days.` - `Use get_datadog_metric_context with use_cloud_cost=true to find available tags for aws.cost.net.amortized.shared.resources.allocated, then group EC2 costs by team.` - `Compare this week's complete EC2 cost to the previous week and explain which teams or accounts changed the most.` For connection instructions, supported clients, and toolset configuration, see [Set Up the Datadog MCP Server](https://docs.datadoghq.com/mcp_server/setup.md). For the full MCP tool reference, see [Datadog MCP Server Tools](https://docs.datadoghq.com/mcp_server/tools.md). ## Further reading{% #further-reading %} - [Bits Chat](https://docs.datadoghq.com/bits_ai/bits_chat.md) - [Datadog MCP Server](https://docs.datadoghq.com/mcp_server.md) - [Cost Explorer](https://docs.datadoghq.com/cloud_cost_management/reporting/explorer.md) - [Budgets](https://docs.datadoghq.com/cloud_cost_management/planning/budgets.md)