BidLab

The flight simulator for programmatic advertising. A native macOS app that teaches the math of programmatic by doing it: nine learning paths (Foundations and Programmatic Core, plus Ad Operations, DSP/Trader, Sales, Planning, Analytics, Engineering, and AI in AdTech) and eleven industry verticals, 225 interactive lessons, 20 certification exams, a math-true bidding simulator, and a shareable credential.

Every concept is interactive and every number is real. Train the bid, the plan, the deal, the experiment, and the bidder itself, without spending a dollar of media.

Try it live (no install)

▶ Open the interactive web demo — the actual BidLab engine running in your browser, free and on any device: drag a bid and run 50,000 auctions scored against the optimum, model reach and frequency, size an A/B test, and explore ten more (budget allocation, attribution, yield, pacing, latency, conversion-pixel setup, and more). No Mac required.

Prefer the full experience? Download for macOS — 225 lessons, 20 exams, spaced-repetition review, and shareable credentials — or build from source below.

The web demo is a faithful TypeScript port of the pure BidLabCore Swift engine, verified bit-for-bit against it in a golden-master test (a given seed reproduces the native app's exact result).

Screenshots

Learn — nine role-based paths plus eleven industry verticals, 225 cited, interactive lessons

Trading Floor — a math-true bidding simulator with first and second-price auctions, a log-normal market, and publisher floors

Run 50,000 auctions in one click — realized win rate, spend, conversions, profit, the floor-vs-competition loss split, and your score against the optimal bid

Every concept is interactive — drag the bid and drop a live auction inside the lesson itself, and the math responds in real time

Industries — the same math across eleven verticals, each with its real economics

Explorable — a library of standalone, share-worthy interactive explainers

Progress and certification — an exportable transcript and shareable credentials

What is in here

• BidLabCore (built as a SwiftPM-style library): a pure, UI-free Swift engine validated by a known-answer test suite (5,271 checks) covering pricing, auctions, probability, statistics, reach and frequency, budget allocation, pacing, a seeded market simulation, scoring, analytics (power, difference-in- differences, adstock, saturation, OLS), DSP systems (latency, queueing), conversion tracking, and the lesson parser.
• The app (Sources/BidLab): a SwiftUI shell with nine surfaces (Learn, Review, Industries, Trading Floor, Tools, Exams, Progress, Explorable, and Settings), an original design system, interactive widgets, a native math renderer, the "open the hood" transparency panel, an embedded SQLite SQL lab, branded PNG/CSV/JSON export, and progress with a shareable certificate.
• Content (Content/Lessons/*.md): 225 authored, cited lessons in an original Markdown-flavored format, parsed at launch from the app bundle. See Content/CONTENT_GUIDE.md for the format.
• Web demo (web/): a Vite + React + TypeScript reimplementation of thirteen interactive explorables (the Trading Floor plus Reach & Frequency, A/B Power, Budget Allocator, Latency, Margin, Pixel Setup, Attribution, Forecast, Yield, Pricing, Adstock, and Distribution), deployed free to GitHub Pages. The math is a faithful port of BidLabCore, verified against the Swift engine in golden-master tests (180 web tests; the engine is gated at 100% coverage), and the build and deploy are automated in .github/workflows/pages.yml.

Building and running

Requires macOS 14 or later and the Swift toolchain (Command Line Tools for Xcode). This project builds entirely with swiftc (no full Xcode required), because the Command Line Tools on the original machine shipped a broken SwiftPM.

./Scripts/test.sh      # build the core and run the test suite (5,271 checks)
./Scripts/build.sh     # build the app -> build/BidLab.app
open build/BidLab.app  # run it

For the web demo:

cd web
npm install
npm test               # run the engine + acceptance test suite (180 checks)
npm run dev            # serve the demo locally

To produce a distributable disk image:

hdiutil create -volname BidLab -srcfolder build/BidLab.app -ov -format UDZO build/BidLab.dmg

Toolchain notes

• Lessons are data, not code: edit any Content/Lessons/{track}-{NN}.md and rebuild. Scripts/test.sh validates every lesson file.
• @State is replaced by a one-line @Local DynamicProperty shim because the SwiftUIMacros plugin is absent from the Command Line Tools. Swap back to @State once a full Xcode toolchain is available.
• The app is ad-hoc signed. Code signing and notarization for public distribution require an Apple Developer ID.

Status

BidLab is feature-complete: all nine role paths and eleven industry verticals are authored (225 lessons, 20 certification exams), every widget is interactive, and the free web demo is live on GitHub Pages. The pure engines are covered to 100% (web) and 100% of reachable code (native), enforced by CI coverage gates, across 5,271 native and 180 web known-answer checks; see docs/COVERAGE.md and docs/ACCEPTANCE.md. Latest release: v1.1.1.

License

BidLab is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.

The bundled Inter typeface is licensed separately under the SIL Open Font License; see Resources/Fonts/Inter-LICENSE.txt.