Flow makes sense — continue
Overview as router, Explorer as home, Inspector for glancing, deep-dive for investigating.
The flow — how the Ads Manager section hangs together
Four surfaces, one journey. (And yes — inline edits stay exactly as approved: status switch, budget, bid. Nothing more.)
Sidebar → "Ads Manager"
New top-level nav item. Landing tab = Overview.
↓
1 · Overview page · /ads
The 8am read: KPI tiles, trend, movers/bleeding/attention lists, activity feed. Every item on it is a link into the Explorer, pre-filtered — it's a router with numbers, not a destination you stay on.
↓ click a mover / alert / "view all campaigns"
2 · Explorer page · /ads/explorer
Where you LIVE. Tree default + flat level views, filters, column groups, inline edits (status/budget/bid), bulk bar, ⋯ menus. 90% of a session happens here without leaving.
↓ two different clicks, two different needs
3a · Inspector panel · in-page
Click the row → side panel slides in. "What is this thing?" — glance at targeting, learning, creative, last changes without losing your place in the table. Esc closes. Transient, no URL.
3b · Deep-dive page · /ads/campaign/{id}
Click the name (or "Open ↗" in Inspector) → full page. "Investigate this thing" — trends, children tables, breakdowns, creatives, history, attribution. URL-addressable: paste it in Slack, bookmark it. Back button returns to the exact Explorer state (your existing list-return-state pattern).
One morning, concretely: Open Ads Manager → Overview shows "🔻 …-mafiaheiress-COSTCAP: $2,745 · ROAS 0.65" → click it → Explorer opens, tree scoped to that campaign → expand: one ad set burns 80% of the spend → click the row, Inspector shows it's out of learning, broad targeting → flip its status switch off → approval popup shows spend/ROAS context → confirm → row shows ⏳ PAUSING… → meanwhile click the campaign name → deep-dive History tab: Greg raised its budget 3 days ago, right before ROAS fell → paste the deep-dive URL in Slack for Greg. Done in ~90 seconds, never opened Meta or Metabase.
That's why both extra surfaces exist: the dashboard is the entry ramp with alerts (came from "replace the Metabase daily check-in" — your Phase 1 success bar), and the deep-dive is where breakdowns/creatives/history live so the Explorer table never has to carry them. Sequencing note: we design/approve surfaces in this order — Explorer (done ✓), Inspector (done ✓), actions (done ✓) — and Overview + deep-dive internals are next only if the flow itself makes sense to you.