Automation

Preview & debug

See exactly what a rule would do, and why, before it touches anything.

Preview (dry-run) in the editor evaluates the rule against your real data and lists every change it would make, item, field, before → after, and the note() reason, without writing anything to Amazon. It is the same evaluation a real run performs, so what you see is what you would get.

A dry-run preview listing seven proposed bid changes, each with its campaign, ad group, before → after value, and the reason the rule gave.
A dry-run preview: every change the rule would make, with the reason it gave, and nothing written to Amazon.

Reading a preview

  • Each proposed change shows the entity (with its campaign/ad group context), the exact value change, and the reason.
  • The run log reports how many items were evaluated and how many matched, a preview that says “0 items evaluated” usually means the window or entity is wrong, not that the rule is broken.
  • Previews respect the same safety ceilings as real runs, and tell you when one of them stopped the run early.

Debug traces

When a condition doesn't behave the way you expect, run a debug preview: it records, per item, the values each part of your condition evaluated to, e.g. that keyword.acos read 0.62 while your threshold was 0.45, so you can see exactly why an item matched or didn't. This is the fastest way to answer “why did/didn't the rule touch this keyword?”

A safe development loop

  1. Write the rule (or paste one from the cookbook) with the schedule on Manual.
  2. Preview, and read the proposed changes, are the right items matched, are amounts sane?
  3. Save in Review mode with a real schedule; approve its queued runs for a week or two.
  4. Switch to Auto-apply once its judgment has earned it.