How to use the Ad Budget and Bidding Planner agent skill

What is an agent skill and what does ads-budget make the agent do?

An agent skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file with instructions that an AI agent reads when a task matches the skill's description. The ads-budget skill is one of these, from the claude-ads repository.

Once installed, the agent works through ad spending decisions the way a careful media planner would. It considers margin, cash limits, sales capacity, attribution doubts and seasonality, calculates break-even boundaries, and shows the formulas, inputs and sensitivity cases behind them. It separates committed baseline spend, controlled experiments and reserve capacity, and compares options such as hold, reallocate, scale, reduce or experiment using marginal evidence rather than blended averages alone.

• Output is a decision-complete plan: platform or campaign, amount, timing, owner, guardrails, success measure and rollback trigger.
• It treats rules of thumb such as a 70/20/10 split or fixed CPA multiples as optional starting points, not proof that a change is safe.

How do you install the ads-budget skill?

Download the ZIP for skills/ads-budget from the directory page. The package contains SKILL.md. Unzip it so the skill folder sits in one of these locations:

• Personal install: ~/.claude/skills/ for use across your projects.
• Project install: a project's .claude/skills/ folder, for use only in that project.
• Claude apps: upload the ZIP under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

How do you trigger the skill with natural requests?

You do not need a special command. The skill is chosen when your request matches its description, which lists terms such as ad budget allocation, media budget, bidding strategy, scaling, spend pacing, ROAS target and investment tradeoffs. Include your numbers and constraints so the agent has inputs to work with.

• "Split my $40,000 monthly paid-media budget across Google, Meta and LinkedIn. Gross margin is 45% and sales can handle about 120 leads a month."
• "Should I scale this campaign? Its ROAS target is 300% and I want to know the break-even point."
• "Plan a spend pacing schedule for the rest of the quarter and tell me when to roll back."

What should you provide for a useful plan?

The skill's workflow asks for objective, conversion value, gross margin, cash constraints, sales capacity, attribution uncertainty, seasonality and platform minimum evidence. If you leave these out, the agent has to state its assumptions, and the plan will be less reliable.

Give it comparable time windows and consistent conversion definitions wherever you can. Mixing a 7-day window with a 30-day one, or counting leads in one platform and sales in another, will distort the comparison.

• Campaign or platform results for the same period, with the conversion definition used.
• Gross margin per sale or lead value.
• Cash limits, minimum or maximum spend, and any sales capacity limits.
• Known tracking or attribution problems.

What safety limits should you know about?

The skill only plans and reviews. It does not move real money. Any spend change is still made by a person or another tool, so errors in your inputs can cost real budget. Check the numbers before acting on them.

According to the listing, the skill runs no scripts and uses no network access, and it has no listed requirements. The only file is SKILL.md.

Its conclusions depend on conversion data quality. If your tracking is unreliable, the skill can flag the uncertainty but cannot remove it. For precise forecasts or heavy calculations, the description points to a separate ads-math skill, so this skill alone may give shallow numbers.

What tips improve the results?

Ask for the formulas and sensitivity cases, not only the recommendation. Those show you which inputs the decision depends on. Ask for a rollback trigger on every change so you know in advance what result would mean stopping.

Treat popular rules such as 70/20/10 or a fixed CPA multiple as a starting point to test against your own data, not a justification on their own.

• Ask: "Show the break-even formula and which input matters most."
• Ask: "What would make you recommend reducing spend instead?"
• Keep a record of the plan so the rationale for budget changes is documented.