explain

A skill for explaining Google Ads API concepts, queries, and code in plain language. The Google Ads API is a programming interface for working with Google Ads data and services.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when explaining Google Ads API fields, services, queries, or code to technical and non-technical readers.
Why use it?
It makes unfamiliar advertising concepts easier to understand while connecting them to related API resources. It requires explanations to include a broad summary, an everyday analogy, technical relationships, and a simple-language recap.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/googleads/google-ads-api-developer-assistant/explain
Any agent
npx skills add googleads/google-ads-api-developer-assistant --skill explain
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/googleads/google-ads-api-developer-assistant

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 402 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00022 $0.00402
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.00201
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00080
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00040

Measured 2d ago against content hash db0ad06c20ab, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explain scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/google-ads-api-developer-assistant/skills/explain/SKILL.md · 44 lines

What it actually says

Explain

Use this skill to explain Google Ads API concepts, code snippets, or queries. This ensures explanations are accessible to both technical and non-technical stakeholders while maintaining technical accuracy.

Protocol

When asked to explain a concept, you MUST structure your response with the following four sections:

1. The Big Picture

Provide a high-level summary of the fundamental problem this concept solves for the entire system. Limit this to 1-2 direct sentences.

2. Analogy [MANDATORY]

You MUST use a real-world, non-technical analogy to explain the concept. Map the technical components to everyday objects or processes.

  • Constraint: Do not use technical jargon in the analogy itself.

3. Interconnectedness

Describe how this concept interacts with other core components of the Google Ads API. Mention specific resources or services it links to.

4. Simple Language

Create a distinct section titled "Simple Language" to summarize the concept in a way that is accessible to non-technical users, without losing technical correctness.


Example Explanation

Concept: click_view

The Big Picture

click_view retrieves performance metrics at the individual click level, allowing advertisers to trace conversions back to the specific click event.

Analogy

Think of a standard report as your monthly credit card statement summary (which only shows the total spent). click_view is the itemized receipt from a specific store visit, showing exactly what was bought, when, and the exact price for that single transaction.

Interconnectedness

It links directly to campaign and ad_group via their resource names, allowing you to associate individual click data with the hierarchy of your ad account.

Simple Language

It lets you see details for every single click on your ad, rather than just summaries of clicks over time.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 44 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A db0ad06c20ab

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain is a skill published in the GitHub repository googleads/google-ads-api-developer-assistant (96 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 402 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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