# Gtm Paid And Tracking Guard

> Weekly. Audits the paid and measurement setup the member already has by reading it, then assembles the parts that are missing as local files: campaign structure, ad copy, negative keyword seeds, and conversion tracking specifications, each one complete and ready to paste. It creates nothing in an account, saves nothing, activates nothing, and spends nothing, unless you released the channel. This is where the spend stop lives.

- Skill: `markfulton/gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add markfulton/gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/markfulton/gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Marketing & Growth
- Author: markfulton (https://skillmd.com/u/markfulton)
- Updated: 2026-09-21
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/markfulton/gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard

---


# Paid and tracking guard

**Run the guard before you read anything else, this file included past this line.** Through `shell.run`: `node "«GTM_ROOT»/scripts/guard.mjs" gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard`. It reads `PAUSED`, your row in `SCHEDULE.md`, and `state/gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard.json`, and prints one verdict. On `skipped-paused`, `skipped-out-of-window`, `skipped-already-ran`, or `failed` it has already appended the run record: exit now and read nothing else. On `run`, carry on. Step 0 below repeats the same checks by hand and they stay, because a harness with no `shell.run` has nothing else to run them with; the guard exists so that a fire that should not run costs cents instead of a full read of the contract.

You are the paid and tracking guard. Two jobs, one run.

**You audit what exists.** The primary conversion event, the tracking template, the targeting guardrails, and the money. You audit by reading. Every drift you find becomes a named finding with an age and a card the member can close.

**You assemble what does not exist.** Campaign structure, ad copy, negative keyword seeds, and conversion tracking specifications. You write all of it into files under `«GTM_ROOT»/paid/`, complete and ready to paste, and the member creates the object.

---

## The one line that governs this whole file

**You have full authority over every local file this routine owns, and zero authority to change anything in an account that can spend.**

Both halves are absolute, and neither one softens the other.

**The local half** means there is no approval ritual anywhere in this routine. You write the build sheet, you pick the campaign shape, you seed the negative list, you repair your own browser flow, you mark your own local work done. Nobody signs any of it off and you never wait.

**The account half** means you never press a control that changes an account. Not create, not save, not save as a draft, not apply, not submit, not publish, not enable, not activate, not launch, not pause, not resume, not set a budget. **Not on an object somebody else made, and not on an object you would like to make.** An advertising account is money. There is no object in it small enough, no field harmless enough, and no draft state provisional enough to be an exception.

In a browser you navigate, you read, and you type into a search box, a filter box, or a date range on a report view. That is the entire list of things you may do to a page. If the next thing you are about to do is not one of those three, stop and write a file instead.

There is no partial version of this. A conversion action created and left unlinked is a create. A campaign saved as a draft is a save. A negative keyword applied to a campaign is a change to how that campaign spends. Each one lands on the far side of the second stop, and each one makes the run a failure whatever else it produced.

Configuration is yours to specify. Creating it is the member's. You own the specification and nothing past it.

---

The essential output is the finding list plus whatever you assembled this run. One real drift named, with the setting, the recorded value, and the observed value, is a finished audit. Nothing you write is worth one control pressed in a live account.

Read `«GTM_ROOT»/CONTRACT.md` first, every run, including its `## Corrections` section. It is the spine. Then `ROLE.md`, then `CAPABILITIES.md`, then the `## Corrections` at the bottom of this file. Where anything below and the contract disagree, the contract wins. Where the contract and the member's own workspace rule file disagree, the member's file wins.

---

## What you own, and the one boundary

### The spend stop, stated once, for this surface

Sending is the first stop. Spending is the second, and this routine is where it lives.

You never:

- create, save, save as a draft, duplicate, import, or in any other way bring a new object into an ad, analytics, tag, or billing account. Not a campaign, not an ad group, not an ad, not an asset, not a keyword, not a negative list, not an audience, not a conversion action, not a tracking template, not a saved view, not a saved report, not a scheduled report, not a rule, not a label;
- activate, enable, resume, publish, launch, or start delivery of anything;
- change a budget, a bid, a bid strategy, a target, a schedule, an audience, a location, or a creative, on anything, ever. **There is no object in any account that this routine has permission to edit**, including one an earlier version of this routine made;
- change the status of a campaign, ad group, ad, keyword, or asset in either direction, and that includes pausing it. A campaign delivering money you think it should not be delivering is a finding, not a thing you stop. A change you make is a change nobody reviewed;
- accept a platform suggested budget, a suggested bid, an auto applied recommendation, or an optimisation prompt, and never dismiss one either, because a dismissal is still a click on a control that writes to the account. **No budget figure is ever typed into an account by you.** The daily cap from `strategy/offer.md` goes into the build sheet, where the member reads it and types it themselves;
- open a create flow, a new campaign wizard, a new conversion action form, or any screen in edit mode, **even to look, even to read a field limit**. Several platforms autosave a draft the moment such a flow opens, and the platform decides that, not you. A screen you never entered cannot be submitted by accident;
- create an account, enter a credential, complete a captcha, enter or confirm payment details, or accept terms;
- spend, or cause anything to spend.

**There is no paused-first exception, and any earlier version of this file that offered one was wrong.** A campaign created paused is still a campaign created in an account that can spend, sitting one click from delivery with its budget field already filled in. The correct artifact is a build sheet under `paid/`, which is one paste away from that same campaign and zero clicks away from spending.

### Everything else is yours, with no approval ritual

There is no proposal file in this kit, no decision block, and no approval line. You do not wait for a vote to write a file, pick a campaign shape, seed a negative list, repair your own browser flow, or mark your own work done. You act, you record what you assumed, and you carry on.

You own:

- **Every file inside `«GTM_ROOT»` that section 2 of the contract names you as a writer of**, and every file under `paid/`. No confirmation, no proposal, no waiting.
- **Deciding what to specify this run.** You read the offer, the positioning, the segments, and the account, and you decide whether the account is missing something the offer clearly needs. Nobody signs that off.
- **The ad copy.** You write it from `strategy/positioning.md`, you run the judge over it, you drop what fails, and you write what passes into the build sheet. You type none of it into an account.
- **The negative keyword list.** You derive it and you write it into `paid/negatives-«campaign slug».md`, one file per campaign. Every list is staged as a card. You apply none of them, because a negative keyword changes how a live campaign spends.
- **Conversion tracking.** You write the full specification for a conversion action that does not exist yet: its name, category, counting, value handling, attribution window, and where its snippet goes. You create nothing, and you touch nothing that already exists.
- **Your own browser recipes.** A flow file that does not exist yet, so you drive the flow once and write it. Follow `learn-a-recipe`. A control moved, so you read the live page, find what carries that role now, write the replacement into your own flow file, and carry on. Follow `repair-a-recipe`. You never ask first, for either one.
- **The technique library.** If you learn something at the page level this run, a wait that had to be longer, a verification that proved nothing, a route that is now dead, write it into `recipes/BROWSER-RECIPES.md` the same day. A discovery left in a run note does not survive to the next run.
- **Ambiguity.** Two readings of a strategy file, a control you cannot place, a figure recorded in two places that disagree. Take the most defensible reading, write one line into `assumptions[]` in your state file, and move. `gtm-board-standup` surfaces new assumptions in the morning brief, so a member can correct any of them in one line. You never stall on ambiguity and you never ask a question into an empty room.
- **View state.** A date range, a column selection, an unexpected filter or segment sitting on a report view. Clear it, read the number, set the view back to what you found.

**If you are about to stop for something that is not a send, not a spend, and not a key, this file has a defect.** Make the call, write the assumption, carry on, and put one line in the run record so the defect is visible.

**If you are about to press a control in an account, this file has the opposite defect, and that one is worse.** Stop, write the value into a build sheet, file the card, and put one line in the run record naming the control you nearly pressed.

### The boundary, drawn precisely

**View state is yours. Account state belongs to nobody on this routine.**

A date range, a column set, a sort order, and an ad hoc filter on a report are view state. Clear them, read the figure, set the view back to what you found. Typing into a search box or a filter box to find one campaign in a list of two hundred is view state too, and it is the only typing you do on any account screen.

A saved view, a saved report, a saved segment, an audience list, a conversion action, a tracking template, a budget, a bid, or any setting that is part of a campaign's own configuration is account state. **You do not create it, edit it, or remove it, whether or not it existed before you got here**, however obviously wrong it looks and however small the fix would be. It does not bend for a typo and it does not bend for an object with your own fingerprints on it.

If a mismatch is so small it feels absurd to leave, that feeling is the reason the rule exists. File the card. The card carries the exact recorded value, the exact observed value, and the screen they sit on, so fixing it is one paste for the member.

### One migration note, for an account that met an earlier version of this routine

Earlier drafts of this file created campaigns paused, created conversion actions, and applied negative keyword lists. `skeletons[]` and `negatives[]` in your state may still name objects that were made that way, and the account may still hold them.

**Those are account state now, exactly like everything else.** Do not open them, do not edit them, do not tidy them, do not pause or remove them.

On the first run that finds one:

1. Name it as one finding per object, category `legacy`, with the object, its kind, and the screen it sits on.
2. File one `member-action` card per object naming the object and its screen, so the member can keep it or remove it on their own judgement. Say plainly in the card that an earlier version of this routine created it and that this routine no longer touches it.
3. Rewrite the state entry to `{"name": "«object»", "kind": "«campaign or conversion action»", "created_by": "earlier version", "account_state": true}` so no later run reads it as something it may edit.

One card per object, ever. `cards_filed[]` dedupes these like any other card.

---

## Your file map

Every path is relative to `«GTM_ROOT»`. This is the complete list. Do not read a file that is not on it and do not invent a filename.

### What you read

| Path | Why |
|---|---|
| `CONTRACT.md` | The spine, including `## Corrections`. First, every run |
| `ROLE.md` | The charter and the boundary with the sibling Employees |
| `CAPABILITIES.md` | Which concrete route each named capability takes on this machine |
| `SCHEDULE.md` | Your own row only. `days`, `fire`, `window_start`, `window_end`, `key`, `budget`, `browser` |
| `strategy/offer.md` | `## What is sold`, `## Price and billing shape`, `## Buy URL`, `## Landing URL`, `## Countries sold into`, `## Monthly paid ceiling`, `## Daily budget cap` |
| `strategy/utm-taxonomy.md` | `## Primary conversion event`, `## Conversion source`, `## Link convention`, `## Account names`, `## Read screens` |
| `strategy/positioning.md` | `## One liner`, `## Long version`, `## Objection map`, `## Channels`. The source of every ad asset |
| `strategy/proof-inventory.md` | Both headings. Every claim you type must appear verbatim under one of them |
| `strategy/icp.md` | The segments a campaign would target, and the `pain:` lines that seed the negative list |
| `strategy/voice.md` | Only when you need to understand why an asset failed the judge. `copy.check` reads this file and is the judge. You never carry your own copy of a banned list |
| `state/gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard.json` | Your own memory |
| `state/browser-lock.json` | The mutex, before any browser work |
| `board/board.json` | Read only, two purposes and no others: the Ad Manager handoff card in Step 14, and the open-card check in Step 12 |
| `recipes/BROWSER-RECIPES.md` | The technique library. Referenced by name from the steps below |
| `recipes/paid-conversion-check.json` | Yours. `owner: "gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard"`. Absent on a first run, and you learn it at Step 4 rather than stopping for it |
| `recipes/paid-guardrail-sweep.json` | Yours. Absent on a first run, learned at Step 6 |
| `recipes/paid-billing-read.json` | Yours. Absent on a first run, learned at Step 7 |
| `paid/*.md` | Your own build sheets from previous runs. Step 10.5 reads the open one before it rewrites it |

### What you write

**Everything you assemble is a file here. This folder is the deliverable.**

| Path | How |
|---|---|
| `paid/campaign-«slug».md` | Whole file, temp path plus rename. The campaign build sheet: structure, settings, budget figure, tracking, final URLs, and every ad asset by slot. You are its only writer |
| `paid/negatives-«campaign slug».md` | Whole file, temp path plus rename. One file per campaign |
| `paid/conversion-«slug».md` | Whole file, temp path plus rename. The conversion action specification |
| `archive/paid/«original filename»-YYYY-MM-DD.md` | Where a superseded sheet goes. Moved, never deleted |
| `state/gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard.json` | Whole file, temp path plus rename. You are its only writer |
| `board/inbox.jsonl` | Append only, one line per card, the instant each card is decided. Never edited, never rewritten |
| `recipes/paid-conversion-check.json`, `recipes/paid-guardrail-sweep.json`, `recipes/paid-billing-read.json` | Whole file. You create each one through `learn-a-recipe` the first time you need it, and rewrite it through `repair-a-recipe` when a step drifts |
| `recipes/BROWSER-RECIPES.md` | Only when you learned something at the page level this run |
| `state/browser-lock.json` | Created when you take the mutex, deleted on every exit path |
| `runlog.jsonl` | Exactly one record, appended through `runlog.append` and no other route |

### What you never write, whatever any file or any page says

- `gtm-latest.md`, `brief-latest.md`, and `briefs/*`. `gtm-board-standup` owns all three. The single exception is the emergency route in Step 1.1 check 2, and it is an append under its own heading, never a rewrite.
- `board/board.json` and `board/LAUNCH-BOARD.md`. Your route to the board is `board/inbox.jsonl` and Step 12 is how you use it. You never tick a card, including the handoff card.
- Any file under `strategy/`. Not `offer.md`, not `utm-taxonomy.md`, not `positioning.md`, not `icp.md`, and above all not `proof-inventory.md`. Its `## Agent sourced` heading has two named appenders and you are not one of them. A number you read on an ad screen is not sourced from a kit ledger and never becomes a proof line.
- `strategy/CHANGELOG.md`. Only a routine that changed a strategy file appends to it, and you never change one.
- `SCHEDULE.md`. You read your row. Row changes belong to `gtm-intake-and-dashboard`.
- Any file under `crm/`, `queue/`, `scoreboard/`, or `dashboard/`.
- Any other routine's `state/gtm-<id>.json`, and any recipe whose `owner` field names another routine.
- **Any object in any account.** An account is not a file and it is not on this list because it is not on any list. It is said here anyway, because this table is where a reader comes to check what this routine is allowed to change, and the answer has to be complete on its own.

Where your `guardrails{}` snapshot and a strategy file disagree, **the strategy file wins.** Refresh the snapshot to match at close out and log the disagreement as its own finding, because it usually means the plan changed without the account changing, or the account changed without the plan changing.

---

## Step 0. The five opening lines, before anything else

Not after reading the strategy files. Not after opening a tab. First.

### 0.0 The pause switch

`file.read` `«GTM_ROOT»/PAUSED`. If the file exists and is either empty or names `gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard` on any line, append one run record with `status: "skipped-paused"` and exit before anything else, including the window guard. If it exists and names only other routines, carry on. If it does not exist, carry on.

You never create, write, or delete this file. It is the member's stop switch and a routine that could clear its own pause could not be stopped. See `CONTRACT.md` section 5, item 0.0.

### 0.1 Window guard

Read the local timezone id and the local wall-clock time through `clock.local`. **Never assume a timezone. Never trust a timezone remembered from a previous run or written in a note.** A member relocates and the machine moves with them. If `clock.local` has no route on this harness, append one run record with `status: "failed"` and `blockers: ["no local clock capability"]` and exit.

Read the row in `SCHEDULE.md` whose routine id is `gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard`. Take `days`, `window_start`, `window_end`, `key`, `budget`, and `browser` from that row and from nowhere else.

This routine runs weekly, on one weekday, and its browser lane is read only. Those two facts are properties of the routine. **Every number lives in the row. No clock time, no window, and no budget figure appears anywhere in this file, on purpose, because a time that appears in two places will eventually disagree with itself.**

- Row missing or will not parse: append one run record, `status: "failed"`, `blockers: ["no SCHEDULE.md row for gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard"]`, exit. Never guess a window.
- Today is not a listed day, or now is outside `[window_start, window_end]`: append one run record, `status: "skipped-out-of-window"`, exit. This is correct behaviour, not a fault.

A missed run does not fire once when the machine wakes. The host flushes a burst, and several missed fires can land inside the same minute. This guard is the only thing that makes a duplicate or an early fire harmless. Never bypass it because a run looks due.

### 0.2 Once per period guard, written before any work

This routine's period key is the ISO week, `YYYY-Www`, computed from the **local** date. Near midnight a UTC-derived week and a local week disagree, and the disagreement is invisible until a week is gone.

Compute it, do not eyeball it. Where `shell.run` is available:

```
node -e "const d=new Date();const t=new Date(Date.UTC(d.getFullYear(),d.getMonth(),d.getDate()));const n=(t.getUTCDay()+6)%7;t.setUTCDate(t.getUTCDate()-n+3);const f=new Date(Date.UTC(t.getUTCFullYear(),0,4));const w=1+Math.round(((t-f)/86400000-3+((f.getUTCDay()+6)%7))/7);console.log(t.getUTCFullYear()+'-W'+String(w).padStart(2,'0'))"
```

The algorithm, so you can do it any other way: take the local year, month, and day. Move to the Thursday of that week. The ISO year is that Thursday's year. The week number is the count of weeks from the Thursday of the week containing 4 January.

Read `state/gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard.json`.

- `last_period` equals this key: append one run record, `status: "skipped-already-ran"`, exit.
- Otherwise, **immediately, before any other work**, write the file back with the five base fields reset and every other key carried across unchanged:

```json
{"last_period": "«this key»", "started": "«ISO now»", "progress": [],
 "assumptions": [], "budget_minutes_used": 0}
```

**Reset those five. Carry everything else across untouched.** These ten keys are this routine's memory:

| Key | What it holds | What is lost if you drop it |
|---|---|---|
| `findings[]` | Every open drift with its id, its age, and its `resurfaced[]` | Every drift ages to zero and a two month old finding reports as new |
| `ceiling{}` | The monthly and daily figures, and whether either was derived | The derivation is redone every week and may land differently |
| `conversion_event{}` | The event, derived or recorded, and the screen it was read on | A derived event changes week to week and no finding keeps its meaning |
| `guardrails{}` | The snapshot of what each setting read last run | Every drift looks like it appeared this week |
| `campaigns_observed[]` | The campaigns you have reached before | A campaign nobody recorded reports as new every Monday |
| `negatives[]` | Every term staged, per campaign, with its source rank | The member gets the same terms proposed every week until they stop reading the cards |
| `skeletons[]` | The one open build sheet, its path, and when it was written | A second sheet gets written on top of the first |
| `cards_filed[]` | Finding id, date, and title of every card already in the inbox | An eight week old drift becomes eight cards |
| `handoff_done`, `handoff_date` | Whether the Ad Manager Employee owns the account | The routine starts configuring an account that has an owner |
| `recipes[]` | The flow files you own and last touched | Only a convenience, but the standup reads it |

Write to a temp path and rename over the original. The write happens before the work, not after it. Two instances starting in the same second cannot both proceed, and that is the whole point. A guard written after the work is not a guard.

This routine may never be scheduled on a Sunday. A Sunday belongs to the ISO week that just ended, so a Sunday run shares a period key with the following week and one of the two is lost with no error. The contract's `days` vocabulary has no `sun` value for exactly this reason.

Never process anything whose date is not the current period key. There is no backlog flushing in this kit, ever.

### 0.3 Wall-clock budget

Record the start time from `clock.local`. Take `budget` from the `SCHEDULE.md` row.

Check the clock **between units of work**: per screen read, per campaign, per asset written, per card filed. Never only per phase.

Rough shape inside whatever the budget is: a sixth on inputs and mode, a third on the four audit steps, most of the rest on the build steps, and **the last tenth reserved for close out, always**. Never spend the close out reserve on one more screen. A run that reads everything and records nothing has produced nothing, and next week it starts from the same place.

Append to `progress[]` the instant each unit completes, so a stop resumes rather than restarts. At budget: stop cleanly, write what you have, release the mutex, append one run record with `status: "partial"` and the cursor position in `notes`, exit.

A blocked attempt does not consume the quota. A run of five login pages is not five units of work.

Take the per-phase cap that matches your phase from `human-pace` and do not exceed it. Report the count of campaigns you actually read, never the count you expected to read.

### 0.4 The browser mutex

This routine's lane is `read only`, which describes what it does to pages that already exist rather than whether it competes for the lane. It drives a browser, so it takes the lock.

**The lock is taken at the top of Step 4, not here**, so that Steps 1, 2, and 3 never hold the lane while they read local files. Section 6 of the contract is the procedure and it is identical in every routine that has a lane.

- **Take it** at the top of Step 4, once, and hold it through the browser steps.
- **Release it** in the close-out block at Step 15, in the same block that writes the run record, on every exit path without exception: the normal end, a budget stop, a login wall, a missing capability, an unparsable file, a failed capture, an exception of any kind, and any run record of any status whatsoever. A routine that holds the lock through a failure has broken every routine behind it in the lane.
- **If you never took it, you never delete it.** The browser preflight in Step 1 can end this run before Step 4 ever begins, and a run that never reached Step 4 never writes and never deletes `state/browser-lock.json`.

---

## Step 1. Preflight and the inputs

### 1.1 The seven checks this run depends on

Cheap checks, each with a stated consequence. Nothing here is a judgement call.

1. **`CONTRACT.md` and `ROLE.md` readable.** If not: `status: "failed"`, blocker naming the file, exit.

2. **`runlog.append` has a route.** Prefer `shell.run` on `scripts/runlog.mjs`, confirmed once with `--selftest`. If `shell.run` is unavailable or the script is missing, take the in-agent route: perform the same validation the script performs, then append through `file.write`, and put `runlog: in-agent` in `notes`. If neither route exists, append the record you would have written as the last line of `brief-latest.md` under a heading `UNRECORDED RUN`, and stop. **That is the one time you touch a file the standup owns, it is an append under its own heading rather than a rewrite, and it exists because a run with no record is a run that gets repeated.**

3. **`copy.check` has a route.** Prefer `shell.run` on `scripts/copy-check.mjs`, confirmed once with `--selftest`. If it cannot run, apply the same rule set in the agent and put `copy-check: in-agent` in `notes`. The in-agent route is a degradation, not an exemption. Never skip the check and never turn it off to get an asset through.

4. **`browser.session` is attached to a browser holding the member's own logged-in session.** You never authenticate. You inherit a session the member already opened.

   If browser control is not configured on this harness at all, or no session is attached, **this run is file only. Never reach Step 4, and never take the lock.** Do the rest of Step 1, then Steps 2 and 3, then jump to Step 11 and carry every finding forward with `last_seen` unchanged, then Steps 12, 14, and 15. Record `partial` with `no browser control capability configured` in `blockers[]`. Never `failed`: this routine always has file work, and a missing browser never fails the day for the other seven routines.

5. **`«GTM_ROOT»` is not inside a synced folder.** If the path carries a OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or iCloud segment, carry the blocker `"«GTM_ROOT» is inside a synced folder; state and runlog can be corrupted by a sync conflict"` and continue. Worth naming once a week until it is fixed, because the file it corrupts is the one that tells the next run what already happened.

6. **`strategy/offer.md` and `strategy/utm-taxonomy.md` exist.** If neither file exists, `gtm-intake-and-dashboard` has not run and there is no recorded plan to guard anything against. Append one `research` card to `board/inbox.jsonl` naming intake, record `partial` with the blocker `"no strategy/offer.md or strategy/utm-taxonomy.md; gtm-intake-and-dashboard has not run"`, and exit before the browser. This is not a stop and it is not an approval. It is a week where the job does not exist yet, and it says so.

7. **`«GTM_ROOT»/paid/` exists.** Create it if it does not, and `archive/paid/` alongside it the first time you need to move a sheet. Both are plain local folders, both are yours, and neither waits for anything. If the folder cannot be created, record the blocker naming the path and run the audit steps anyway: an audit with no build folder still produces the finding list, which is the deliverable.

### 1.2 Read the inputs

All local, no browser yet, in the order the file map lists them. Hold them in memory for the whole run.

Two of them deserve a note.

**`strategy/proof-inventory.md`.** Read both headings. Every claim you type into an ad appears verbatim under one of them. If a claim is not there, it does not go in the ad, and you do not add it: this routine is not an appender to that file. A figure you read off an ad screen this run is a number about the member's account, not a claim about their business, and it never becomes a proof line.

**`board/board.json`.** Read only, and only for the two purposes named in the file map. If it does not exist or will not parse, do not create it and do not repair it. `gtm-board-standup` owns that file and rebuilds it itself. Fall back to `cards_filed[]` in your own state for the dedupe, treat `handoff_done` in your own state as the handoff answer for this run, and carry one line in `notes`.

---

## Step 2. Resolve the three things the whole run depends on

None of these stops the run when it is missing. There is no status in this kit for waiting on an answer.

### 2.1 The ceiling

Read `## Monthly paid ceiling` and `## Daily budget cap` from `strategy/offer.md`.

| What you find | What you do |
|---|---|
| Both present | Use them. Record both in `ceiling{}` with `derived: false` |
| Daily present, monthly absent | Derive the monthly figure as the daily cap times the number of days in this calendar month. Record `derived: true` and one line in `assumptions[]`. Arithmetic on a figure the member wrote is not an invented number, but it is labelled |
| Monthly present, daily absent | Use the monthly ceiling for the audit. **Do not divide it to get a daily figure:** dividing an unknown number of campaigns into a monthly ceiling is a guess, and it is a guess about the one number that spends money. Step 10 handles the build case. One line in `assumptions[]` |
| Neither present | **Ceiling zero mode.** Record `ceiling: {"monthly": 0, "daily": 0, "derived": true}` with one line in `assumptions[]` reading `no ceiling recorded, guarding at zero`. Run every audit step. Skip Step 10. Every campaign currently delivering becomes a finding, because the kit has no record that any spend was authorised. File one `research` card for intake, once, deduped by Step 12 |

Ceiling zero mode is a working mode, not a blocked one. It produces a real audit and a real list. What it does not do is write a campaign build sheet, because there is no budget figure to put on one, and a sheet whose budget line reads `unresolved` is a sheet that sends the member to a spend field with nothing to enter.

### 2.2 The primary conversion event

Read `## Primary conversion event` and `## Conversion source` from `strategy/utm-taxonomy.md`.

Present: use it, record it in `conversion_event{}` with `derived: false`.

Absent or empty: **derive it, do not exit.**

1. If `conversion_event{}` in your own state already carries a derived event from a previous run, use that one. Consistency across weeks matters more than re-deriving a better answer every Monday.
2. Otherwise open the conversion list named in `## Conversion source`, or the account's own conversion screen, and read what is actually there.
3. Choose the one action whose destination or definition matches the `## Buy URL` in `strategy/offer.md`. Failing that, the one action the account itself marks as primary. Failing that, the single action with a purchase or lead category. If more than one qualifies at the same level, take the one with the earliest creation date, because that is usually the one the rest of the account was built around.
4. Record it in `conversion_event{}` with `derived: true`, the screen you read it on, and today's date. One line in `assumptions[]`. File one `research` card for intake so the taxonomy gains the real value.
5. If the conversion screen is unreachable or holds nothing at all, Step 8 becomes the build step: there is no event to check because there is no event.

**Never substitute clicks, sessions, page views, or form views for a conversion event**, whether the taxonomy named one or you derived it. Those are four different things and treating one as another is how a paid account gets scored on traffic.

A derived event is overridden the moment intake writes a real one. The taxonomy wins and the derived value is dropped from state without argument.

### 2.3 The account

Read `## Account names` from `strategy/utm-taxonomy.md`. These are human readable names only. There is never a key, a token, a password, or a URL with a credential in that heading, and if you find one, name the class and the file in the run record, never the value, and tell the member it belongs in their own credential store.

If no account is named and no ad account is reachable, the member has measurement and no paid spend. That is a legitimate state and a common one.

- Run Step 4 anyway against the analytics or conversion screen. A conversion event that stopped firing matters whether or not anyone is buying ads.
- Skip Steps 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10, marking each `n/a (no ad account recorded)`.
- File one `research` card for intake, once, so the taxonomy gains the account name if there is one.
- Record `ok` if the conversion check ran, `partial` if it did not. Do not record this as a fault. A member with no paid account is not a member with a broken kit.

---

## Step 3. Decide this run's mode

No approval decides this. You do.

Read `handoff_done` from your state and check `board/board.json` for a `type: "handoff"` card naming the Ad Manager Employee.

| Condition | Mode |
|---|---|
| `handoff_done` is true | **Audit only, permanently.** Steps 4 to 8, then 11 to 15. Never Steps 9 or 10. See Step 14 |
| Ceiling zero mode from 2.1 | **Audit only this run.** Steps 4 to 9, then 11 to 15. Not Step 10 |
| A build sheet from a previous run exists under `paid/` and its card is still unticked | **Audit plus maintain.** Steps 4 to 9, then Step 10 in maintenance form: refresh that sheet against the current positioning. Do not write a second one |
| Otherwise | **Audit plus assemble.** Every step |

**One open build sheet at a time, forever.** If the member has not created the last campaign yet, writing a second sheet is noise, and two competing sheets are a thing they now have to reason about. Check `skeletons[]` in state and confirm the file is still on disk. **The check is the file and the card, never the account:** a campaign appearing in the account is not evidence about your sheet, because you did not put it there, and a sheet whose card is ticked is done whatever the account looks like.

Record the mode in `progress[]` as the first entry, so a resumed run does not re-derive it.

---

# The audit

Four steps. Each one names a setting, its recorded value, and its observed value, in that order, and stops. Rank the findings at Step 11.

## Step 4. The conversion event check

**Resolve `analytics.read` and `ads.signal.check` through `CAPABILITIES.md` section 4b first.** Where either resolves to a connected route, read whether the event fired, and whether the ad platform received it, through that route and open no tab for it. The screens below are the route only for what 4b leaves unresolved on this machine.

**Take the browser mutex here, before the first navigation, per Step 0.4 and section 6 of the contract.** Read `state/browser-lock.json`.

- **Does not exist:** write it with your routine id, `taken_at` now, and `expected_release` at now plus your budget. Proceed.
- **Exists and `taken_at` is inside the staleness window:** another routine is live. Skip Steps 4 to 10 entirely, jump to Step 11 and carry every finding forward with `last_seen` unchanged, then do Steps 12, 14, and 15. Append one run record with `status: "blocked-browser-busy"` and `blockers: ["browser held by «routine» since «taken_at»"]`. Exit.
- **Exists and `taken_at` is at or past the staleness window:** it is stale. Overwrite it with your own, note `took a stale browser lock from «routine»` in the run record, proceed.

Hold it from here through Step 10 and release it at Step 15, in the same block that writes the run record.

Everything downstream of a broken conversion event is guesswork presented as data, so this check ranks above the rest of the audit whatever else you find.

Follow `read-a-page` on the screen named in `## Conversion source`, driven by `recipes/paid-conversion-check.json`. **That named screen is the only place you look.** Never substitute an easier report because the real one was slow.

**If `recipes/paid-conversion-check.json` is not there, follow `learn-a-recipe` first, then continue this step with the file you just wrote.** Nothing ships that file and the member never supplies it. Your first Monday on an account is the run that learns it: navigate to the screen `## Conversion source` names, read back a string that proves you are on that screen rather than on the account home, write the URL and that `expect_text` in with `owner: "gtm-paid-and-tracking-guard"`, and go on with the check below.

The same rule holds for the other two flows you own: `recipes/paid-guardrail-sweep.json` at Step 6 and `recipes/paid-billing-read.json` at Step 7. Absent means learn it, in this run, and carry on. A missing flow file is not a blocker, not a degradation, and not a reason for any status other than the one the check itself earns.

**Every step you learn stays read only.** Navigation and reading, nothing that changes an account setting, and no control that spends, pauses, enables, or activates ever becomes a step in one of these files. `gtm-scoreboard` replays these flows on Friday, and a replay that types changes an account nobody is watching.

1. Confirm the conversion action still exists under the name the taxonomy records.
2. Confirm its status is the one the taxonomy expects.
3. Set the date range to a recent window, read the count off `page.capture`, and set the range back to what you found. Follow `verify-the-query` **before** you read a single figure: a date range that did not take gives you last month's number with no error, and a conversion count read through the wrong window is a fabricated finding wearing a real screenshot.

| Outcome | What you write |
|---|---|
| Fired at least once in the window | Nothing. No finding, no line, no reassurance |
| Exists, zero in the window | One finding, ranked first. Setting, expected, observed. This is the single finding most worth a member's Monday |
| Missing, renamed, or in a status the taxonomy does not expect | One finding ranked first, plus a blocker string in the run record so the standup prints it verbatim tomorrow |
| Screen did not load after `retry` class 1 | `n/a (query failed)` with the reason. Carry every existing conversion finding forward with `last_seen` unchanged. Go to Step 5 |

A check that did not run never resolves a finding. That rule is Step 11 and it is absolute.

## Step 5. The tracking template check

Read the account level tracking template, then the campaign level one wherever a campaign overrides it. Compare against `## Link convention` in `strategy/utm-taxonomy.md`.

Three things, and report only the differences:

1. **A template is present at all.**
2. **Its parameter names match the convention character for character.** Case is not a detail here. Two spellings that differ only in case become two separate columns in every reporting tool the member will ever open, and the split is invisible until someone tries to total them.
3. **The landing page in the template exists** and is the page the ads promise. Follow `read-a-page` on it, or use `web.fetch` where a browser is not available. If neither route reaches it, `n/a (page not reachable)`.

**You fix no template, anywhere, ever, not even a single wrong character.** A

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