The Toolbox: Everything I Open-Sourced After 15 Years and $350M in Ad Spend
AI agent, and MCP server I've shipped — plus the story of Buddy, my AI advertising agent.
Hey — John here.
If you’re new: I’ve spent 15+ years in enterprise paid media. Farmers Insurance, Prudential, Eventbrite, GM, Columbia, Harvard, NortonLifeLock (192% YoY paid search growth), with agency years at Seer Interactive and Brainlabs. I speak at Hero Conf about AI in advertising and write for Search Engine Land.
The entire time, I kept a private list titled “tools that should exist.”
Over the past couple of years, I built that list. Today’s issue is the guided tour — every link is free, and almost everything is open source.
Meet Buddy 🤖
Buddy is my AI advertising agent. In the demo above, watch the full loop:
Step 1 — Ask in plain English. “Write 3 Google Ads headlines and 2 descriptions for a Phoenix garage door repair company.”
Step 2 — Grounded in live data. Buddy pulls real Phoenix SERP data and writes copy inside Google’s character limits — headlines ≤30, descriptions ≤90.
Step 3 — The “why,” not just the what. Search intent, Quality Score mirroring, and the policy gotcha most advertisers miss (no phone numbers in headlines — use a call asset).
Step 4 — Validate creative. Upload an asset, check it against 50+ platform specs.
Buddy ships as an iOS/Android app, a Claude Code plugin (6 sub-agents, 77 skills), and a Gemini CLI extension.
The Three-Platform Ecosystem
Everything I build connects across three homes:
ahmeego.com — AI-powered Google Ads management and consulting. The business.
googleadsagent.ai — free AI advertising tools, no login. The playground.
itallstartedwithaidea.com — where it all started. The story.
The Trainable Advertising AI
MiniAgent is, as far as I know, the world’s first trainable open-source advertising AI — 26M parameters, trains from zero in 2 hours on one GPU, ships with 14 platform MCP servers.
The supporting cast:
ContextOS — context engineering for AI agents, pip-installable
advertising-hub — 14 ad platforms, 25+ agents, one repo
google-ads-api-agent — 28 API actions, live read/write
agent-skills — 73+ skills for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini
google-ads-mcp — Python MCP server, 29 tools
The Scripts Folder 📜
Free Google Ads Scripts, battle-tested on enterprise accounts. Copy, paste, run:
Account grader — full audit with a letter grade
Anomaly detection — catch swings before the client does
Negative keyword conflicts — find negatives blocking converters
Hard daily budget caps — the control Google won’t give you
Bulk campaign builder — spreadsheet → campaigns/RSAs
And One Game 🎮
I built a fully playable Bejeweled match-3 game through pure AI vibe coding — one HTML file, zero frameworks. Play it in your browser.
It’s the same build process behind everything above. Want to learn it? My free 42-page AI Agents Crash Course has 6 playable games, quizzes, and XP.
By the Numbers
$350M+ managed ad spend
15+ years across Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon
57 repos, open source
73+ agent skills, 14 platforms, 28 API actions
192% YoY paid search growth at NortonLifeLock
Why Free?
Every tool came from a real problem in a real account. I coach high school football in Arizona with the same philosophy: show up, do the reps, help others level up.
— John