# Billy — Your AI FinOps Assistant Billy is your AI FinOps assistant, bringing the entire Finout platform into one conversation. Instead of building views, setting filters, and reading charts, you ask Billy a question in plain English — and get a real, data-backed answer in seconds, complete with charts. Ask it anything across your connected cloud infrastructure: "How much did we spend on EC2 last month?" \ "What are our top cost anomalies this week?" \ "Show me savings plan coverage by service." \ "Explain how this virtual tag is built." Billy is connected directly to your live Finout data and respects your user permission and data access controls. It understands the cloud providers you use, your virtual tags, anomalies, budgets, and cost history. You just ask. ### Who Billy is for | Role | What Billy does for you | | ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **FinOps teams** | Stop building views and running queries to answer cost and usage questions. Ask Billy and get the answer in seconds. | | **Engineering managers** | Understand cost and usage impact without leaving your workflow. | | **Finance leaders** | Get answers on budgets, trends, and forecasts — without waiting for FinOps to build a report. | *** ### How Billy works When you ask Billy a question, it: 1. **Understands intent** — Interprets your question in plain language. 2. **Plans the query** — Selects the right internal tools automatically. 3. **Fetches data** — Queries your live Finout data. 4. **Responds** — Synthesizes the results into a plain-language answer, usually with a chart or table. Billy is powered by Claude Sonnet and runs on AWS Bedrock. Your data stays within the AWS ecosystem and is never sent to any third party. #### What Billy uses under the hood Billy is powered by the [Finout MCP Server](https://docs.finout.io/ai-and-developer-tools/finout-mcp-integration). The MCP exposes a set of data tools spanning cost and usage analysis, anomaly detection, cost recommendations, budget tracking, tag governance, and more. You never need to call these directly — Billy selects and chains them automatically based on what you ask. To view the full list of tools, go to [Finout MCP Server](https://docs.finout.io/ai-and-developer-tools/finout-mcp-integration). *** ### What you can ask Billy covers the full range of FinOps questions your team faces day to day. #### Cost and usage analysis * *"What were our top 5 AWS services by spend last month?"* * *"Show me EC2 costs broken down by team tag for the last 30 days."* * *"Compare our cloud costs this quarter vs. last quarter."* * *"Which dimensions had the biggest cost increase this month?"* #### Anomalies and waste * *"Are there any high-severity anomalies this week?"* * *"What are our biggest rightsizing opportunities right now?"* * *"Which services have had unexpected cost spikes in the past 7 days?"* * *"Show me idle or over-provisioned resources we could cut."* #### Budgets and forecasts * *"How are we tracking against our Q2 budget?"* * *"Which teams are closest to their budget limits this month?"* #### Governance and tagging * *"What percentage of our AWS spend is tagged with a team tag?"* * *"How does the environment Virtual Tag allocate costs?"* #### Savings and commitments * *"What is our current savings plan coverage?"* * *"Where are we leaving reserved instance discounts on the table?"* *** ## Getting Started ### Prerequisites Billy requires [AI Services](https://docs.finout.io/cross-platform-features/list-of-cross-platform-features/ai-in-finout/ai-opt-in) to be enabled for your Finout account. This is a one-time action performed by an account Admin. Once enabled, all users in the account can access Billy immediately. *** ### Enable Billy {% hint style="info" %} Admin access is required to enable AI Services. {% endhint %} 1. **Navigate to Settings** — Click **Settings** in the Finout sidebar. 2. **Open Compliance & Privacy** — Select the **Compliance & Privacy** tab. 3. **Enable AI Services** — Turn on the **Enable AI Services** toggle. The change takes effect immediately for all users in the account.
4. **Open Billy** — Click **Billy** in the left navigation to start your first conversation. *** ### Use Billy #### Open Billy 1. Click **Billy** in the left navigation. The Billy panel opens. 2. Select one of the suggested prompts to jump straight in, or type your own question in the message box.
3. Type your question in plain English and press **Enter**. Billy queries your live Finout data and returns an answer — usually with a chart or summary table. There is no query language to learn and no filters to configure first. *Example: "How much did we spend on EC2 last month, broken down by team tag?"* #### Follow up Billy maintains context throughout the conversation. You can drill in or ask for different data without repeating yourself. *Examples:* * *"Now filter that to just the production environment."* * *"Can you show the same breakdown as a pie chart?"* #### Stop a response If Billy is mid-response and you want to stop it, click the **Stop** button that appears while Billy is generating its answer. #### View chat history All your Billy conversations are saved automatically. Access previous chats from the history panel in the left navigation. Your history persists across sessions.
#### Share a chat **Click** the **Share** button at the top of any Billy chat or from the Chat History to generate a shareable link. Anyone with access to the same Finout account can view it.
{% hint style="info" %} Billy cannot decode a Finout share link pasted into chat. If you want Billy to analyze a specific saved view, describe the filters in plain text instead. {% endhint %} *** ### **Rate a response** After Billy responds, you can rate the answer using the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons that appear below the response. * **Thumbs up** — Marks the response as helpful. * **Thumbs down** — Opens a feedback textbox. You can optionally describe what went wrong, then click **Send** to submit.
{% hint style="info" %} Your feedback is sent directly to the Finout team and helps improve Billy over time. Submitting feedback does not change the response or re-run the query. {% endhint %} *** ### Permissions and data access Billy uses your logged-in Finout user identity to determine what data it can access and which permissions your user has. Your existing Finout access controls apply — Billy cannot surface data outside the scope of your user permissions. *** ### Prompting tips The clearer your question, the faster and more precise Billy's answer. * **Be specific.** Include the cloud provider, metric, and time period in a single question. * **Name the dimension.** If you want a breakdown by team, environment, or namespace, say so explicitly. * **Follow up naturally.** Billy remembers context within a conversation. Drill in without repeating yourself. *** ## FAQs #### Getting started **Who can enable Billy?**\ An account Admin must enable AI Services via **Settings → Compliance & Privacy**. Once enabled, all users in the account can access Billy immediately. **Is Billy included in my Finout plan?**\ Yes. Billy is available to all Finout accounts that have opted in to AI Services. There is no additional charge. *** #### Data and security **What model powers Billy?**\ Billy is powered by Claude Sonnet and runs on AWS Bedrock. **Is my data sent to a third party?**\ No. Your data stays within the AWS ecosystem and is never shared with any third party. **Will Billy show me data I'm not supposed to see?**\ No. Billy uses your logged-in Finout user identity and respects your existing permissions and data access. It only sees what your user can see in the platform. **Does Billy learn from my conversations?**\ Conversations are recorded for quality improvement purposes. Billy does not personalize its behavior for individual users across sessions. *** #### Using Billy **Does Billy remember my previous chats?**\ Yes. Billy saves your full conversation history. Access previous chats from the history panel in the left navigation at any time. **How do I share a conversation?**\ Use the **Share** button at the top of any Billy chat to generate a shareable link. The recipient must have access to the same Finout account to view it. **Can Billy read a Finout share link I paste in?**\ Not yet. Billy cannot decode Finout share links. Describe the filters you want to apply in plain text instead. **Can Billy create or modify things in Finout?**\ No. Billy is a read-only analyst — it explains your costs but does not act on them. It cannot create or modify views, dashboards, Virtual Tags, alerts, or reports, and it cannot delete any objects. All changes must be made directly in the Finout UI. **Can Billy write code or export files?**\ No. Billy does not write scripts, generate CSV exports, or produce downloadable documents. **Can Billy read files or screenshots I upload?**\ No. Billy cannot read uploaded files, screenshots, PDFs, or spreadsheets. Describe what you need in plain text instead. **What time periods can Billy query?**\ Billy supports a full range of relative and absolute time periods: today, yesterday, last 7 days, this week, last week, this month, last month, last quarter, and custom date ranges (for example, January 1 to March 31, 2026). **What if Billy gives me an unexpected or incorrect answer?**\ Billy is an AI assistant and may occasionally misinterpret ambiguous questions. If something looks wrong, try rephrasing with more specific filters or time periods. You can also click the thumbs-down icon on any Billy response to submit feedback to the Finout team. **How is Billy different from the Finout MCP Server?**\ Both use the same underlying Finout data engine, but they work differently. Billy is built into Finout — no installation required. The [Finout MCP Server](https://docs.finout.io/ai-and-developer-tools/finout-mcp-integration) requires setup in your AI tool of choice (such as Claude Desktop or Cursor). Billy also adds an LLM reasoning layer on top of the MCP data tools, so it interprets your question, decides which tools to call, and combines the results into a clear answer. With the MCP Server, that reasoning is handled by the AI tool you connect to.
--- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.finout.io/ai-and-developer-tools/billy-your-ai-finops-assistant.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.