Ad Studio - find winning ads (optional skill)

What it is

Ad Studio never contacts Meta. Ads come into its Library through an import door: you add one by hand, or an agent sends it. This skill is the agent that fills the door. You ask for ads on a keyword or a brand, Agent Reach opens Meta's public Ad Library once, the skill picks the ads that have been running longest, saves their pictures and hands them to Ad Studio.

It is not part of the Ad Studio plugin. The plugin still holds no code that contacts Meta, and neither it nor Omniscio ever sees a Facebook password or cookie: the login stays inside the Chrome profile Agent Reach uses.

Where to find it

Turning it on. Settings → Features → Enable the Ad Studio ad-finding skill. It is off by default. Turning it on installs the skill at the next launch; turning it off removes it again.

Your daily limit. Once the switch is on, Ad searches per day appears beneath it. It starts at 10 and takes any whole number from 1 to 50. The skill reads this number every time it runs.

Using it. There is no panel. Ask your agent in plain words: "Find winning ads for protein powder and put them in Ad Studio." Add a country, a number of ads (up to 25) or a Board name if you like.

How it behaves

What you should know before you use it

• It is optional, and the choice to switch it on is yours.
• Use a separate Facebook account. Make one just for this, tied to nothing personal, and sign Agent Reach's Chrome profile in to it. Never use your own account or your business or ad accounts.
• Meta's rules limit automated collection of its pages. The skill browses lightly, like one person, but it is still automated, and Facebook can restrict an account it sees doing it. That is why the account must be one you can afford to lose.
• Before each task your agent tells you which Facebook account the profile is signed in to, so you can stop it if it is the wrong one.
• It stops for the day at the first sign of a block (a bot-check page, a request to confirm the account, a login page, a restriction notice, a page with no ad data, or a picture request that answers any HTTP error). Every later run that day is refused without contacting Meta. The next day starts fresh. The page Meta answered with is kept as last-page.html in the output folder, so the cause of a block can be read.

What one search does

• One page load of the Ad Library, opened by Agent Reach in that Chrome profile.
• It keeps the longest-running image ads from the top results, at most two per advertiser, up to the number you asked for (at most 25).
• One picture request per kept ad, four seconds apart.
• It writes the import bodies, which your agent sends to Ad Studio. Omniscio holds every import for your approval: one card per batch in your Inbox under Approvals, which you open and approve. Nothing enters the Library until you do.

The daily limit

• Each search counts before the page loads, so a crash part way through still counts. A search that cannot start (Agent Reach missing or not connected) counts nothing.
• When the day's searches reach your limit, the skill refuses without making any request, and says so.
• The count lives in ~/.amc/ad-studio-find-ads-usage.json, outside the skill folder, so reinstalling or switching the skill off and on does not reset it.
• The limit is held for you: an agent cannot change it through the settings route, only you can, in Settings. If the skill cannot read the limit from Omniscio it refuses rather than guess.

What it needs on your computer

• Node.js 18 or newer. The scripts are plain JavaScript and use nothing else. If Node is missing the skill says so before doing anything, and nothing is sent to Meta.
• Agent Reach with OpenCLI, and its Chrome extension connected, in a Chrome profile signed in to your spare Facebook account. Omniscio does not install Agent Reach for you; the skill checks for it before counting a search and says what is missing.
• Omniscio running, with Ad Studio on. Ad Studio is behind its own switch in Settings → Lab. The switch is on by default.

Related

ad-studio.md is the plugin itself, including the import door this skill feeds. beautify-site.md is another bundled skill you switch on yourself, and use-skills.md covers the Skills browser.