In past episodes I showed you how we run our Google Ads and Meta analysis through Claude. It worked. It was also a lot of clicking.
At first I spent one to two hours a week on it. Then we used n8n to pull the reports automatically. Then Claude Code started reading the folder on its own. But I was still pressing every button in Google Ads myself.
Building those workflows took me weeks to months. I copied error messages back and forth all day.
That changed when the Claude and n8n connection improved. Claude can now create, edit, and fix workflows directly. I never open n8n.
This episode walks through the full evolution. I keep it simple, even if you’ve never touched an automation tool.
Here’s the loop I run now. Claude finishes the analysis. It executes what it can. For the rest, it tells me whether it can build the ability or whether a VA should do it. Out of 25 tasks, it handles about 24.
I also cover how it hands tasks to my team through Trello and Slack. You’ll hear how API keys stay secure. And I explain the weekly loop that researches new best practices and rewrites its own workflow.
Plus the silliest build I run: a nightly bedtime story for my kids.
What we cover:
- Where we started: manual downloads, one to two hours a week
- Using n8n (about $20 a month) to pull Google Ads and Meta reports
- Moving to Claude Code so it reads the report folder itself
- The bottleneck: still clicking every change by hand
- The upgrade: Claude now builds and edits n8n workflows for you
- The “can you build the workflow?” conversation
- Execute, build, or delegate: sorting every weekly action step
- What we automate: blog posts, schema, SEO, meta tags, ads, Google Business Profile, Instagram, LinkedIn
- Sending tasks to Trello and Slack from the same chat
- Turning team meetings into assigned action steps
- API keys: the one step you do by hand, and why
- Dropping someone’s AI video into Claude and asking, “Should we build this?”
- A loop that updates itself on new best practices every week
- Teaching Claude why you disagreed with its decision
- The Navy SEAL bedtime story automation
Your first step:
Make an n8n account. Install Claude Code. Connect them. Then describe the outcome you want and tell Claude to build it.
Send me your build:
Built something wild? Email me at dranthony@thecranialdoc.com. If I use your idea, I’ll send you some of my secret sauce for ads and analytics.
Links:
Free weekly email series: thecranialdoc.com Email Dr. Anthony: dranthony@thecranialdoc.com n8n: n8n.io
Chapters:
- 00:00 Cold open
- 00:36 Where we left off with Claude and ads
- 01:03 The problem: still time intensive
- 01:44 Using n8n to pull every report
- 03:01 Claude Code reads the folder itself
- 03:24 Still pressing every button by hand
- 03:51 The upgrade: Claude builds the workflows
- 04:45 Recap of the full evolution
- 05:51 Letting Claude make Google Ads changes
- 06:56 Why this matters if you’re not technical
- 07:46 “Can you build the workflow?”
- 08:11 Execute, build, or delegate: 24 of 25 tasks
- 08:41 What we run on autopilot
- 09:20 Handing tasks to Trello and Slack
- 11:07 API keys and security
- 12:16 Connect anything to anything
- 13:31 “Is anything in this video worth building?”
- 14:25 The loop that improves itself
- 15:48 Learning from your disagreements
- 16:03 Your first step
- 17:08 Send me your wildest build
- 17:27 The Navy SEAL bedtime story automation
- 18:59 A secret sauce trade