cost-management

The full skill.

Original instructions from the publisher’s SKILL.md

# Grafana Cloud Cost Management

> **Docs**: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/

Reduce metric / log / trace spend with Adaptive signals + cost-attribution labels.

## Prerequisites

- A Grafana Cloud stack with Adaptive Metrics / Logs / Traces enabled (visible under **Cost Management**)
- Alloy (or Grafana Agent) ingesting telemetry, with API key in scope `metrics:write` + `logs:write` (+ `traces:write`)
- Admin access to the stack to apply Adaptive recommendations

## Common Workflows

### 1. Attribute cost to a team / service

```alloy
# 1. Add external labels in Alloy (metrics + logs configs)
prometheus.remote_write "cloud" {
  endpoint { url = sys.env("PROMETHEUS_URL") /* ... */ }
  external_labels = { team = "platform", project = "checkout-service" }
}
```

```bash
# 2. Reload Alloy
curl -X POST http://localhost:12345/-/reload

# 3. Verify labels arrived in Grafana Cloud
#    In Explore, run:  count by (team, project) ({__name__=~".+"})
#    Then visit Cost Management → group by `team` / `project`
```

See [`references/adaptive-signals.md`](references/adaptive-signals.md) for the full Alloy snippet.

### 2. Cut metric cardinality with Adaptive Metrics

```bash
# 1. Pull recommendations
curl https://<stack>.grafana.net/api/plugins/grafana-adaptive-metrics-app/resources/v1/recommendations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" | jq '.recommendations | length'

# 2. In the UI: Grafana Cloud → Adaptive Metrics → review rules sorted by series-reduction impact
# 3. Test in "Preview" mode before applying
# 4. Apply (takes effect within 5 min)

# 5. Verify — series count should drop on the affected metrics
#    Before applying, capture baseline:
#      count({__name__="http_request_duration_seconds_bucket"})
#    Wait 10 min after apply, run again — expect 10x+ reduction for high-card metrics.

# Rollback if needed: open the rule in the UI → Disable, or DELETE /v1/rules/<id>.
```

### 3. Drop noisy logs in Alloy

```alloy
# 1. Add a filter stage (see references/adaptive-signals.md for the full block)
loki.process "filter_logs" {
  forward_to = [loki.write.cloud.receiver]
  stage.drop { expression = ".*GET /health.*" }
}
```

```bash
# 2. Reload Alloy
curl -X POST http://localhost:12345/-/reload

# 3. Verify the filter — health logs should NOT appear in Logs Drilldown
#    LogQL check (should return 0):
#      sum(rate({app="my-app"} |= "GET /health" [5m]))
#    Bytes-ingested should also drop. Compare 24h before/after:
#      sum(increase(loki_ingester_chunk_size_bytes_sum[24h])) by (namespace)
```

### 4. Set a usage alert before you hit quota

See [`references/alerts-and-queries.md`](references/alerts-and-queries.md) for ready-to-paste rules (`MetricsUsageHigh`, `LogsIngestionHigh`).

## Optimization checklist

- [ ] Apply Adaptive Metrics recommendations — typically reduces series 40-60%
- [ ] Drop health/readiness probe logs in Alloy
- [ ] Tail-sample traces to 5-10% + keep errors / slow spans
- [ ] Add `team` + `project` external labels to every Alloy config
- [ ] Set usage alerts at 80% of quota
- [ ] Replace expensive ad-hoc queries with recording rules

## References

- [`references/adaptive-signals.md`](references/adaptive-signals.md) — Adaptive Metrics / Logs / Traces config; cost-attribution labels
- [`references/alerts-and-queries.md`](references/alerts-and-queries.md) — usage alert rules, cost-finding PromQL, billing-unit table

## Resources

- [Cost Management docs](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/)
- [Adaptive Metrics](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/reduce-costs/metrics-costs/adaptive-metrics/)
- [Adaptive Logs](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/reduce-costs/logs-costs/)