Snowflake Cost Spike Check

A Claude skill for the morning a Snowflake warehouse uses far more credits than usual. It walks through credits, compile time and query volume with read-only SQL and names the most likely cause.

Download the Skill (.zip)View SKILL.md

Runs in your own Claude account

What it does

  1. 1Confirms the warehouse, the spike window, a normal period to compare against, and the role you will run queries as.
  2. 2Checks credits by warehouse and hour in WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY, split into compute and cloud services.
  3. 3Splits query time into compile and execute seconds from QUERY_HISTORY and compares the spike with the normal period.
  4. 4Finds what kept the warehouse awake: deep query plans, parallel fan-out, or a trickle of small queries that stops auto-suspend.
  5. 5Recommends fixes in the order to try them, each tied to the evidence it found.

What it needs

  • A role that can read SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE, such as ACCOUNTADMIN or a role granted IMPORTED PRIVILEGES on the SNOWFLAKE database.
  • A way to run SQL, or query results pasted from Snowsight.
  • The day or hours that looked wrong, and a normal day to compare against.

Prompts to try

  • “Our TRANSFORM_WH used about five times its usual credits yesterday. Help me find out why.”
  • “Auto-suspend is set to 60 seconds but the warehouse billed every hour today. What kept it running?”
  • “Here are my query history results for the spike window. Is this a compile time problem?”

What you get back: A short diagnosis with the credits for the spike against a normal period, the evidence from each query, the most likely cause, and fixes in order.

How to install it

Claude on the web or desktop
Download the .zip. In Claude, open Settings, find Skills under Capabilities, and upload the file. Then ask Claude one of the prompts above.
Claude Code
Unzip the folder into ~/.claude/skills/ so the file sits at ~/.claude/skills/snowflake-cost-spike-check/SKILL.md. Claude Code picks it up in the next session.
Read it first
The skill is a plain text file of instructions. Open SKILL.md to see exactly what it tells Claude to do before you install it.
Change it
Edit the definitions or the output format to match how your team counts things. It is yours to adapt.

Common questions

Does the skill change anything in my Snowflake account?

No. Every query in the skill is a read-only SELECT. It recommends changes such as moving a workload or flattening a query, and you decide whether to make them.

Why might yesterday's spike be missing from the results?

ACCOUNT_USAGE views have latency, from minutes to a few hours depending on the view. For the last few hours the skill uses the INFORMATION_SCHEMA query history function instead, which keeps seven days and returns at most 10,000 rows.

What role do I need?

By default only ACCOUNTADMIN can read SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE. Other roles need IMPORTED PRIVILEGES on the SNOWFLAKE database or a Snowflake database role that grants access to these views.

Does it estimate the dollar cost?

Only if you give it your contracted price per credit. Otherwise it reports credits.

Want Claude connected to your own data?

We set up read-only access to Snowflake, the curated tables Claude should use, and checks so the answers match your reports.

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