manage_experiment
Pause, restart or reactivate a whole experiment (a launched channel campaign inside a wizard campaign).
Destructive campaigns
Deletes, archives, launches or moves budget. Do not give an agent this one without a human gate.
What it does
Pause, restart or reactivate a whole experiment (a launched channel campaign inside a wizard campaign).
KEYWORDS: pause, stop, restart, resume, unpause, reactivate, experiment, control, manage, halt
WHEN TO USE:
- User asks to "pause experiment X"
- User wants to "stop the LinkedIn experiment"
- User requests to "restart experiment Y"
- User wants to "resume/unpause a paused experiment"
- User wants a completed experiment to run again until a new end date
SCOPE - DO NOT CONFUSE WITH SIMILAR TOOLS:
- manage_experiment (this tool) acts on ONE WHOLE EXPERIMENT.
- pause_experiment_keyword / restart_experiment_keyword act on ONE
KEYWORD inside an experiment - they never pause the experiment itself.
- manage_campaign acts on the whole wizard campaign, which can span
several experiments/channels.
- update_experiment_end_date moves the end date of a RUNNING Google Ads
or Microsoft Ads experiment; reactivate (below) is for a COMPLETED one.
ACTIONS:
- pause: Stop ad serving and budget spend for the experiment
- restart: Resume a paused experiment so it serves ads and spends again
- reactivate: Run a Completed experiment again until end_date (required,
YYYY-MM-DD, today or later; at most one year ahead on Facebook and
Instagram). It spends again, so reactivate only when the user asked for it.
WORKFLOW:
1. Find the experiment: search_experiments(search_name="my experiment")
and note experimentId and statusLabel from the results
2. Pause it: manage_experiment(experiment_id=123, action="pause")
3. Or restart it: manage_experiment(experiment_id=123, action="restart")
4. Or reactivate a Completed one:
manage_experiment(experiment_id=123, action="reactivate", end_date="2026-12-31")
IMPORTANT VALIDATION REQUIREMENTS:
- **CRITICAL**: You can ONLY pause experiments that are currently active
- **CRITICAL**: You can ONLY restart experiments that are currently Paused
- **CRITICAL**: You can ONLY reactivate experiments that are currently Completed
- Use search_experiments first to verify the current experiment status
RESTART AND REACTIVATE BUDGET CONFIRMATION FLOW:
Restarting and reactivating first estimate the impact on budget groups
(the same check the main UI runs). If any budget group is impacted, the
tool does NOT act: it returns status="requires_confirmation" with the impacted
groups in budgetImpact. Present the impact to the user, and only after
they explicitly confirm, call again with confirm_budget_impact=true.
WARNING: This changes the live state of the experiment on the ad channel.
WARNING: ASYNC FLOW: The channel-side status change may take a moment to
propagate. Verify later with search_experiments.Arguments
| Argument | Type | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
experiment_id |
integer | required | The experiment ID to pause, restart or reactivate (experimentId from search_experiments). |
action |
string | required | The action to perform: 'pause' to stop the experiment, 'restart' to resume a paused one, 'reactivate' to run a completed one again until end_date one of: pause, restart, reactivate |
end_date |
string | Reactivate only, and required there: the new end date, YYYY-MM-DD, today or later (at most one year ahead on Facebook and Instagram). | |
confirm_budget_impact |
boolean | Restart and reactivate only. Set true ONLY after the user explicitly confirmed the budget-group impact returned by a previous manage_experiment call with status='requires_confirmation'. | |
auto_pause_ignore_historical_data |
boolean | Restart only. When the experiment was auto-paused for low performance, true tells the optimizer to ignore the historical performance data that caused the pause. |
Request
Request template, not a complete runnable example. Replace placeholders, empty objects, arrays, and zero values with valid account-specific inputs. Read required fields and nested constraints in the full schema. Confirm the account, connected channels, and referenced assets before calling a write tool.
curl
curl -s -X POST https://mcp-server.metadata.io/mcp \
-H "Authorization: $METADATA_PAT" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
-H "MCP-Protocol-Version: 2025-11-25" \
-d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"manage_experiment","arguments":{"experiment_id":0,"action":"pause"}}}'
Response
No recorded response. This tool can delete, archive, launch or move budget, so it is never executed to build these docs.
The request is an illustrative template. Fill required fields and check the current schema before calling it. No response is fabricated.
Related
Other campaigns tools: