Connecting an assistant to the tools you already run
What a connection is
A connection gives an assistant standing access to a system your company already pays for. Through it, the assistant reads what the system holds and, where the connection allows it, acts inside the system, under an account with set permissions. The change is easiest to see in a question. “What did we spend on each platform last month, and were the leads any good?” used to span seven browser tabs and a paste into a sheet. Connected, it is answered in one pass, and the assistant shows where each number came from.
The monthly client report at this desk runs on this. Spend and results come out of four ad platforms, get joined to a lead-quality spreadsheet, have the attribution rules agreed with the client applied on top, and carry the consultancy fee in the totals. The client’s figures stay off these pages; the shape of the job is the point, and nothing in the shape is exotic. Every step in it is something a person used to do in a browser.
What to ask your own team
Put four questions to them before anyone books a demo.
Which systems that we already pay for hold the answers we keep asking each other for?
Which of those ship a connector for the assistant we use, and which only have an API? The answer changes month to month, so ask for a dated list.
Whose account will each connection act as, and what is it allowed to do there? A connection carries the permissions of the account behind it, no more and no fewer.
Which recurring piece of work goes through it first, and who owns the definitions inside that work?
What a connection does not solve
Two things stay on the human side of every connection here. The first is definitions. The report above works because the attribution rules in it were argued out and written down before the assistant ever ran it; connect the systems before that argument has happened and the ambiguity gets automated along with everything else. The second is judgment. The assistant assembles the number; someone accountable reads it and decides what changes next month. At this desk, that someone is me.
When no connector exists
This is the part most writing on the subject leaves out. A connector is software. Where a platform has not shipped one, or where the one on offer does not fit, a connection can be built against the platform’s public API, and the assistant that will use the connection is the same tool that writes it. Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads and Pinterest Ads are each connected that way here, built at this desk with the assistant reading the platform’s documentation as it went. The connection layer is a thing a company can own.
As of August 2026
Which platforms ship connectors changes month to month. The stack page carries what is connected here today.
Check before building. A gap you remember may have closed.
Ad platforms version and retire their APIs on their own schedules. A self-built connection is code, and code gets maintained.