Ad Angle Research

Turn a competitor's live ads into a short, sourced list of angles the user can test. The output is a creative brief, not a growth story: what they say, to whom, with what offer, where the click lands, and how long each ad has survived.

Start with the decision

Confirm the competitor domain and what the user is about to make: ad copy, a landing page, a creative test plan, or a positioning check. If the user's own product and audience are unknown, ask once; otherwise state the assumption and continue. Keep competitor facts separate from the user's context throughout.

Get the ads

With the Tracetify connector (tool names may be prefixed, e.g. mcp__tracetify__research_competitor_ads):

1. Ask before the paid lookup. A fresh research_competitor_ads lookup costs 3 Tracetify credits; the same domain re-queried within a week is free. Before the call, including the first one in a session, tell the user the domain and that price, and wait for an explicit yes. A request to research the competitor is not that yes. If they decline, continue with the manual route below. Do not call it repeatedly for the same domain in one session.
2. Read the response as two independent sources. meta and google are each an array (checked), an empty array (checked, nothing running) or null (could not be checked). Never describe a null source as "no ads".
3. Use summary for counts, earliest for how long they have been buying, and formats for the mix. Each Meta ad carries headline, body, cta, linkUrl, mediaUrl, platforms, start, end, active and a libraryUrl you can cite. Each Google ad carries advertiser, format, start, end, region and a transparency-center url.

Without the connector: say so once, offer the one-line setup (claude mcp add --transport http tracetify https://tracetify.com/api/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer <key>", key from https://tracetify.com/dashboard/ai, free account), then continue manually using references/manual-ad-library.md. Do not stop the task because the connector is missing, and do not install anything on the user's behalf.

Read the ads as evidence