How to connect Google Ads to Hermes Agent

Pairing is a two-step handshake: run hermes clawlink begin, approve the link in your browser, then run hermes clawlink finish. If you ran finish before approving, or the approval link expired, run hermes clawlink begin again to get a fresh link. Confirm the plugin was installed with --enable, then verify with hermes clawlink test.

Reconnect Google Ads from the dashboard, then start a fresh chat if the runtime still has the old tool catalog loaded.

Google Ads tool schemas load on demand the first time a tool runs and are cached after that, so this error usually clears on its own: wait a few seconds and retry the same request. If every Google Ads call keeps failing with it in a fresh chat, reconnect from the dashboard, and contact support if it still persists — that pattern points to a configuration problem on our side, not something you can fix by reconnecting again.

Two usual causes. The connected account may not have access to the specific workspace, inbox, store, or project in the request — check that first. If access looks right, the agent may have sent a placeholder value (like "YOUR_ID" or an example id from documentation) instead of a real one: ask it to run a list or search tool first, then retry the action with a real id from those results. Most failures at this stage are one of these two, not ClawLink bugs.

Hermes wrote a query against campaign_performance_report, keyword_performance_report or another *_performance_report name. None of them exist. They come from the legacy AdWords reporting API, and they are so thoroughly baked into older tutorials and Stack Overflow answers that a model reaching for training data reproduces them by default. GAQL selects metrics from the entity instead, so the same report becomes SELECT campaign.name, metrics.impressions, metrics.clicks, metrics.cost_micros FROM campaign WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS. Left alone an agent tends to retry the identical query, so the fix is to tell it the resource does not exist rather than to ask it to try again.

Ask the agent to diagnose it:

That resource is from the retired AdWords API. Rewrite the query in current GAQL, selecting metrics.* from campaign, ad_group, or keyword_view with a segments.date filter. Print the query before running it.

The update reached Google with nothing in it. The mutate tools accept a fixed set of fields and discard the rest before the request goes out, so a campaign update carrying budget_amount_micros or a nested bidding-strategy object arrives empty and Google objects that there is no field mask. Supplying update_mask yourself does not help, because the mask is derived and a passed one is thrown away. Retry with supported fields only: name, status, start_date, end_date, daily_budget, campaign_budget, bidding_strategy_type and related settings on campaigns, and name, status, resource_name on ad group updates. If the goal was a bid ceiling or a target CPA, no retry will work, because those sub-fields are not writable through this toolkit.

Ask the agent to diagnose it:

Print the operations array you sent. Drop any update_mask and every field outside the supported set, then tell me whether what I asked for is writable at all before you retry.

This one comes from mixing FROM conversion_action with segments.conversion_action or segments.conversion_action_name. Google treats those segments as incompatible with the conversion_action resource and rejects the query rather than ignoring the clash. Pick a shape: keep FROM conversion_action and read conversion_action.id and conversion_action.name as plain attributes, or keep the segment and move to FROM customer or FROM campaign, in which case only conversion metrics such as metrics.conversions, metrics.all_conversions and metrics.conversions_value may sit beside it.

Ask the agent to diagnose it:

Give me two rewrites: one with FROM conversion_action selecting conversion_action.name as an attribute, one with FROM campaign using segments.conversion_action_name and only conversion metrics. Run whichever answers my question.

That tool does not exist, and neither do googleads_mutate_campaign_budgets, googleads_search, googleads_mutate_ad_group_ads or googleads_mutate_campaign_criteria. The guesses are reasonable, because the Google Ads API really does have separate budget and criterion services, but this toolkit exposes ten tools and those are not among them. Budgets change through daily_budget on googleads_mutate_campaigns, and reporting runs through googleads_search_stream_gaql rather than a plain googleads_search. Ask Hermes to read the catalog before it guesses a second time.

Ask the agent to diagnose it:

Run clawlink_list_tools for google-ads and show me every tool name it returns. Redo my request using only those names.

Try reconnecting Google Ads and complete the consent flow in the same browser session. Partial OAuth approvals or switching accounts mid-flow can leave the connection incomplete.

Yes. ClawLink is the fastest way to connect Hermes to Google Ads: link your Google Ads account once in the browser and Hermes Agent can call the Google Ads API through 10 ready-made tools — no custom code or token handling.

Install the plugin with hermes plugins install ClawLink-HQ/hermes-plugin --enable, then pair once: run hermes clawlink begin, approve the link in your browser, and run hermes clawlink finish. Connect Google Ads in the dashboard and Hermes can use it from the next message — no config files or API keys to manage.

About two minutes. Sign in, click Connect next to Google Ads in the dashboard, authenticate, and Hermes Agent can use it from the next chat message.

The alternative to ClawLink is usually manual OAuth app setup plus your own token handling, permission troubleshooting, and tool plumbing for Hermes Agent. That is fine if you want to build and maintain the integration yourself. Most teams just want Google Ads working from chat.

No, and the reason this matters more than it sounds is what a fresh token can reach. Sign up for the Google Ads API and you are issued a token at Test Account Access level, which works against test accounts only, so it cannot read the account you actually spend money on. Production reads need Explorer access, which Google grants automatically only in some cases and which caps you at 2,880 operations per day; lifting that cap means applying for Standard access and waiting around ten business days. Connecting Google Ads through ClawLink uses hosted OAuth on Google's own consent screen, so there is no developer token, client secret, or refresh token in your setup at all.

Because the query is wrong, not the auth, and six patterns cover most of it: legacy *_performance_report resources, FROM device when device is a segment, IN (SELECT ...) subqueries that GAQL does not support, quoted numeric ids, metrics.* selected from ad_group_criterion instead of keyword_view, and metrics.conversion_rate, which is not a real field. ClawLink checks all six before the query leaves and returns the corrected form, so Hermes can fix it on the next turn instead of retrying something Google will never accept.

Budgets yes, bidding mostly no. googleads_mutate_campaigns takes a daily_budget field and that is the only budget control in the toolkit, so there is nothing to call for creating a separate budget resource. On bidding you can set bidding_strategy_type and manual_cpc, but the values inside a portfolio strategy, meaning target_cpa.target_cpa_micros, target_roas.target_roas and target_spend.cpc_bid_ceiling_micros, cannot be written through these tools. Because Hermes runs unattended, it is worth saying in the prompt that an unsupported change should be reported rather than retried.

Usually not. customer_id is optional on googleads_search_stream_gaql, and most successful queries in production leave it out, so a missing customer ID is rarely why a call failed. It earns its place when you manage several accounts: have the agent run googleads_list_accessible_customers first and name the account you mean, which is what removes the ambiguity.

Pairing is a two-step handshake: run hermes clawlink begin, approve the link in your browser, then run hermes clawlink finish. If you ran finish before approving, or the approval link expired, run hermes clawlink begin again to get a fresh link. Confirm the plugin was installed with --enable, then verify with hermes clawlink test.