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Dex Overview

Dex is Cloud ex Machina's assistant for cloud cost, ownership, and FinOps work. It helps teams understand what is happening in their cloud, explain cost changes, follow up on opportunities, and move work to the right owners.

Dex uses the context already connected to Cloud ex Machina: cloud billing and usage data, asset inventory, organization and identity information, communication tools, and optional ticketing or code integrations. The more context you connect, the more specific Dex can be.

Where to use Dex​

You can work with Dex in the Cloud ex Machina application and, when configured, in collaboration tools such as Slack or Microsoft Teams. In chat surfaces, Dex can answer questions, summarize what it sees, and help you decide what to do next.

Dex is designed for operational cloud conversations, not generic chat. It is most useful when the question relates to cloud cost, assets, owners, opportunities, commitments, or follow-up work.

What Dex needs​

Dex works best when Cloud ex Machina has access to the systems that describe your environment:

  • Cloud data feeds and APIs for spend, usage, and asset inventory.
  • Identity and organization context so Dex can connect assets to teams and users.
  • Communication integrations so Dex can answer and follow up where teams work.
  • Ticketing integrations, such as Jira, Linear, ServiceNow, GitHub, or GitLab, when you want opportunities tracked in your existing process.
  • Git repository integrations, when your team wants Dex to connect recommendations to infrastructure or application code and help prepare changes.

Dex will still answer from the context available to it, but missing integrations may limit ownership lookup, handoff, or remediation support.

What to ask​

Ask direct questions in the language your team already uses. Dex can usually handle follow-ups in the same conversation, so you do not need to restate all context every time.

Cost and usage​

  • "What changed in AWS spend this week?"
  • "Why did the production RDS cost increase?"
  • "Show me the biggest savings opportunities for this month."
  • "Which services are driving our unallocated spend?"
  • "Show that as a table and chart."

Ownership and context​

  • "Who owns this workload?"
  • "Which team should review these idle resources?"
  • "Summarize the context for this account before I reach out."
  • "What changed around this service recently?"
  • "Draw the architecture around this workload."

Opportunities​

  • "Explain this opportunity in plain English."
  • "What evidence supports this recommendation?"
  • "What is the risk if we apply it?"
  • "Prepare a handoff note for the owner."
  • "Generate an artifact we can review with the team."
  • "Create a diagram of the proposed change."
  • "Find where this should be changed in code."
  • "Draft a code diff for this recommendation."
  • "Open a pull request for the proposed fix."

Commitments​

  • "Which commitment recommendations should we review first?"
  • "Where do we still have uncovered on-demand usage?"
  • "Explain this recommendation to an engineering manager."

Follow-up​

  • "Turn this into next steps."
  • "What decision is blocking this?"
  • "Remind me what we agreed to do."
  • "Draft a message for the team responsible."
  • "Update the plan using the comments on the artifact."

What Dex does not replace​

Dex helps teams investigate and decide. It does not replace your approval process, change management process, or engineering review. Treat Dex's output as decision support: use it to understand the situation faster, then apply your normal checks before changing production systems.