LOG 202412221531 #log

marketo.rest: unleashing the ai bloodhound 🔍

you know those moments when you're digging through marketo activity logs, feeling like you're searching for a needle in a digital haystack? that's exactly where this project started - a late-night "what if" that turned into "holy crap, claude can actually do this."

the dream becomes reality

my colleague at work has earned herself the nickname "the bloodhound" because of her uncanny ability to sniff out problems in our marketo instance. watching her work got me thinking - what if we could automate that kind of intuition? what if we could just point claude at our activity logs and let it sniff out the story?

turns out, we can. and that's how marketo.rest was born.

how it works

it's pretty straightforward (now, anyway - let's not talk about the first few iterations 😅):
1. you've got a lead error notification
2. instead of diving into marketo's activity log maze
3. just drop the email into marketo.rest
4. ask what happened
5. claude does the detective work and gives you the tldr

no more clicking through endless activity logs or trying to piece together what happened from scattered timestamps. the ai bloodhound follows the scent and brings back exactly what you need to know.

the technical bits

this was actually my first really complicated project - the kind that makes you question your life choices at 2am but teaches you more than any tutorial ever could. started out as a replit agent experiment, evolved through claude.ai iterations, and now it's this whole thing that actually works in production.

the architecture is like a game of hot potato between:
- marketo's api (grabbing thoe activity logs)
- claude (our star detective, making sense of the chaos)
- a clean api wrapper (because nobody needs more complexity in their life)

what's cooking

right now it's mostly me using it (cost is still a thing with ai apis, but they're coming down), and while it's already saving me hours of log-diving, there's so much more i want to add:

• support for all marketo activity types (because why stop at lead errors?)
• quick actions for common lookups (those repetitive tasks we all hate)
• custom instruction templates (because one size definitely doesn't fit all)
• more llm options (looking at you, openai)
• azure oauth support (enterprise-ready vibes)

the next chapter

the next big evolution is brewing - thinking cursor.sh agent + claude for some extra spice. it's been running smooth in production for a couple months now, and while my team hasn't fully jumped on board yet, i'm using it regularly enough to know i'm onto something good.

sometimes the best tools come from those "wouldn't it be cool if..." moments. this one just happened to turn into a real thing that actually helps make sense of marketo's activity universe.

p.s. to all the marketo activity logs i no longer have to manually parse - you're welcome 😉✌️