How to Manage Your Ads With Claude Code (And Why Most GitHub Repos Won't Get You There)

Somebody on your team opened Claude Code last night, typed "can you look at our Google Ads account," and got back a polite apology. That was the moment the question turned real: can Claude Code actually manage ad campaigns?

Short answer: yes, with the right plumbing. Long answer: there are three credible open-source options on GitHub right now, and each one gets you somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of the way. This post walks through what they do, where they hit a wall, and what to reach for when you need the last 20 percent.

Nothing here is a takedown. The people who built these repos are doing real work in a space that didn't exist 18 months ago. We're just being specific about the seams.

The Three GitHub Repos That Matter Right Now

1. claude-ads — the purpose-built audit tool

Repo: AgriciDaniel/claude-ads · 2.6k ⭐ · MIT

Claude-ads is what most people find first when they search "claude code ads." It's a Claude Code plugin that runs a 250-point audit across Google, Meta, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Microsoft, and Apple Ads. Install is two commands:

/plugin marketplace add AgriciDaniel/claude-ads
/plugin install claude-ads@agricidaniel-claude-ads

What it's great at: deep one-shot audits. You point it at an account, it returns a 0–100 health score, flags the usual suspects (wasted spend, thin match types, creatives past their fatigue point), and can export a PDF for a client deliverable. If you're an agency putting together a monthly audit for a client, this is a genuinely useful starting point.

Where it runs out of road: it's an auditor, not an operator. The scoring is retrospective. There's no merged cross-platform ROAS view — each platform is checked in isolation, so the double-counting problem between Meta's 1-day view window and Google's 30-day click window is invisible to it. And the optional live-data MCP servers for each platform are separate projects with different auth flows, which means a fresh install is four or five OAuth dances, not one.

2. marketingskills — the biggest name, paid-ads as a side skill

Repo: coreyhaines31/marketingskills · 21.4k ⭐ · MIT

This is the most-starred marketing-skills repo on GitHub, period. It's a collection of Agent Skills for Claude Code (and Codex, Cursor, Windsurf — anything that implements the Agent Skills spec), and inside it lives a paid-ads skill covering Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and X.

npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills

What it's great at: breadth. If you already use this repo for copy, SEO, conversion work, and growth engineering, the paid-ads skill slots into a familiar workflow. You get strategic thinking — campaign structure, audience logic, creative direction — from an agent that already knows your marketing context.

Where it runs out of road: the paid-ads skill is strategy-layer, not data-layer. It doesn't pull live performance numbers from your accounts. It gives you good answers to "how should I structure this campaign" and weak answers to "what's my actual blended ROAS this month." That's a fine trade if you want a thinking partner. It's not enough if you want the agent to notice, at 10 a.m., that one of your Meta ad sets just tripled its CPA.

3. toprank — small, focused, Google-Ads-first

Repo: nowork-studio/toprank · 272 ⭐ · MIT

Toprank is the smallest of the three and the most philosophically interesting. Its README tagline — *"data-driven decisions, not dashboards"* — is the right instinct. It pairs Google Search Console with Google Ads inside Claude Code and uses a second-opinion pattern (routing some checks through Gemini) before surfacing recommendations.

/plugin marketplace add nowork-studio/toprank
/plugin install toprank@nowork-studio

What it's great at: the SEO/SEM overlap. If half your problem is "my Google Ads are bidding on a keyword I already rank for organically," toprank catches it. It connects through the AdsAgent MCP server, which keeps the setup tight.

Where it runs out of road: Google-only. No Meta, no TikTok, no LinkedIn. That's a conscious choice — and fine for a lot of DTC brands running 90% Google Search — but it rules the tool out the moment you need a cross-platform view.

What These Three Have in Common

They're all free. They're all open source. They're all 2025-2026 vintage, which means small teams, fast iteration, occasional rough edges, and a genuine ceiling you hit around the point where you need:

• •One merged view of spend and revenue across Google Ads and Meta Ads — not three separate audits that each count the same conversion.
• •Continuous monitoring, not one-shot audits — the agent needs to know on Tuesday that something broke on Monday, not wait for you to ask.
• •Recommendations that are actionable inside the same tool that generated them — "your tROAS on campaign X is 40% below target, shift $800/day to campaign Y" instead of a PDF you read on Friday.
• •A single OAuth flow, not five — when you switch machines or add a teammate, the setup shouldn't be a half-day project.

Every one of those gaps is fixable. They just require the data layer that none of these repos own, because building it isn't a weekend project — it's the product.

The AdBliss MCP Server

AdBliss ships an MCP server that connects Claude Code (or Cursor, or any MCP client) to a single unified view of your Google Ads and Meta Ads accounts. One install, one auth flow, merged data, live performance, and AI recommendations that AdBliss's recommendation engine generates from the cross-platform data — not from a single platform's self-reported ROAS.

Install is one command in your terminal:

claude mcp add adbliss --transport http https://mcp.adbliss.io/mcp

Or add it manually to your `claude_desktop_config.json`:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "adbliss": {
      "url": "https://mcp.adbliss.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

AdBliss uses OAuth for auth — a browser window opens on first connection and you're set.

Once it's connected, Claude Code can answer questions the three repos above can't:

• •*"What's my blended ROAS across all three platforms this week vs. last week?"*
• •*"Which of my Meta ad sets are showing creative fatigue signals before CTR has dropped?"*
• •*"If I shifted 15% of my Meta budget to Google Search tomorrow, what's the expected impact on total attributed revenue?"*
• •*"Flag me any time a campaign's CPA moves more than 20% from its 7-day baseline."*

AdBliss is free to start — no credit card required, 50 API calls and 3 AI recommendation runs per month on the free tier. The Starter plan is $30/month for 2,000 API calls and 50 AI runs. Pricing scales from there based on volume, not seats.

Which One to Start With

• •You want a one-shot audit for a client deliverable: claude-ads.
• •You want strategic campaign thinking inside the agent you already use for copy and SEO: marketingskills.
• •You're Google-only and want the SEO/SEM overlap: toprank.
• •You want live, merged, cross-platform data and an agent that can actually tell you what's happening right now: AdBliss MCP.

None of these cancel each other out. The way several teams we've talked to run it: they install one of the OSS skills for the auditing and strategy layers, then point AdBliss MCP at the same account for the live data. The combination is strong — and honestly, it's where we think this category lands in 18 months.

Try the AdBliss MCP server free — no credit card, no seat minimums. Grab the config at adbliss.io/docs/mcp