How to set up your first AI bot team, no tech skills needed

By the end of this guide you’ll have a primary bot, a few specialists with one job each, and the limits that keep them safe and affordable.

In our last article, we argued that the wrapper now matters more than the model. The wrapper is the software around a model: what it can reach, what it remembers, when it runs, and where it has to ask you first. Since May, the big AI labs have launched at least six always-on bots and agents, from Google’s Gemini Spark on 19 May to Anthropic’s Claude Duet on 21 October (US dates).

Most of them don’t let you choose the model. Grok Bot and Claude Duet pick it for you. OpenAI says its dots run on GPT-6 Astra, and we found no way to pick another model. We found no model picker in Spark either. You set up the wrapper: the job, the memory, the schedule, the access and the approvals. This guide shows how to set one up, how to use it, and what we recommend, using the rules we follow ourselves.

1. Know what a bot is

A chat window waits for you to type, answers, and forgets the conversation once you move on. A bot is an AI worker you keep. It has a name and a job, remembers how you like things done, and works on its own cloud computer, so it keeps going when your laptop is closed. It runs on a schedule, asks you before anything risky, and passes work to other bots.

Grok Bot’s design team sums up its approach as “Chats are disposable”, and builds the whole product around named bots. When you come back tomorrow, you talk to the same bot.

2. Set up Grok Bot and nominate a primary bot

We start with Grok Bot because we use it. It launched in beta on 11 August 2026, US time. Its maker is SpaceXSI, the AI company formerly called xAI and then SpaceXAI.

Why we use Grok Bot

James Hallam, Softwired founder, runs his business on it from Brisbane:

“I’ve used Grok Bot almost exclusively, because it was the first one I was aware of that looked like it could solve a few key issues for me in my work. As a result, over about the last three weeks I’ve moved to it almost 100%, off a Claude Max plan and a Claude Team plan. We still have Claude, and we’ll still use it.”

Grok Bot had been in beta for about seven weeks when James switched. We hold that models are becoming a utility, that today’s models are good enough for most business tasks, and that the value sits in the wrapper. His move is one example.

Get access and install

Grok Bot comes with paid Cursor plans and with SuperGrok. Since October it’s also part of The X Subscription from the US$30-a-month Premium tier. The cheaper Plus and Free tiers don’t include it. Prices are in US dollars, so check what you’ll pay in Australia. Download the desktop app for Mac, Windows or Linux from x.ai/bot and sign in. Phone apps exist for iPhone and Android.

Make your first bot the primary one

James’s first rule: “Nominate a primary bot. This means it can delegate to others and you’re not spread thin across 20 different contexts.”

Grok Bot has this built in. Your primary bot carries a star. It spots work it can take off your plate and offers to handle it. On first setup, the app helps you choose or create one. Team Bots (step 6) can’t be your primary bot. The official docs don’t yet explain how to change your primary bot later.

James’s primary bot is his Chief of Staff. He talks to it, and it routes work to the specialist bots. It gives each one only the narrow context it needs and returns their results to him in batches.

Give it a job description

Give the bot a short name, one main job, and a description of how it should work. Write the description like a job ad for a careful new starter. Include the rules that must always hold, such as “never send external messages without approval”.

Then brief it the way you’d brief a colleague. The Grok Bot guide suggests five parts: the outcome you want, the sources to use, what to avoid or ask about first, what to hand back, and when to stop for your review. When the bot reaches an app that needs a login, it asks you to take over its screen so you type the password yourself. Never paste a password into the chat.

3. Give it a memory and a schedule

When you correct its work, say what should stick: “Use this format for future weekly reports: five bullets, links inline, and a section called Decisions needed”. A bot keeps preferences, key facts and summaries of past work, within limits. For anything that matters, ask it to check the current source.

Once a task works well, ask the bot to save the method as a skill, which is a reusable set of instructions. Then ask for a routine in plain words: “Every weekday at 8am, run the inbox skill and post a summary here. If you can’t reach my inbox, tell me instead of guessing.” Check that it names the right schedule, time zone and approval point, and use the test run before you leave it alone. A test run does real work, so test with safe inputs. Routines run in the background, so your computer doesn’t need to be on.

4. Add specialist bots and let them hand work over

James’s second rule: “Give each bot a discrete job.” His third covers size: keep each job “small enough to be specialised and big enough to be meaningful”. The Grok Bot docs agree: focused bots build more useful context than one catch-all bot, and you add a bot when the work has a stable specialist role.

James’s team:

• Chief of Staff (primary bot): coordinates and routes work to the others.
• Group CFO: the financials.
• Head of Strategy: strategy and planning.
• Marketing and Web: websites, search and marketing.
• Customer Research: research on customers and markets.
• Head of Product: our products.
• AI Adoption: runs our AI Adoption program work.
• Personal Finance Manager: James’s own finances.

All your bots share one cloud computer, so they can see each other’s files. As James puts it, they can see each other’s work, but they don’t have to actively absorb it all unless it’s relevant. Each bot’s chats and learned context stay its own.

Bots hand work over by messaging each other, and you can see the handoff in the conversation. You can also put two to six bots in a group chat and use @ and a bot’s name to give one of them a task. Name one owner for each stage. Too many parallel handoffs create duplicate work, and every bot reply counts towards your usage. A primary bot handles the routing, so you brief one bot.

5. Limit access, keep a human on risky actions, and govern the cost

Connect only the apps your bots need

Connectors are the links to your other apps, such as email, calendar, accounting, your customer database and Google Drive. Fewer links means fewer things that can go wrong.

Grok Bot connects apps account-wide. An app you connect is available to every bot on your account, and every bot works from the same computer, including its files, browser sessions and saved logins. You can’t switch an app on for one bot and off for another. The docs say plainly that separate bots aren’t a security boundary.

So limit access in three steps:

• Connect only the apps your whole team of bots needs.
• Write into each bot’s description which apps it may use. The finance bot uses the accounting app. The marketing bot uses the website and analytics, and stays out of the books.
• To cut off an app, delete the connector or revoke its authorization in the source service.

Keep passwords and keys off the shared computer if another bot shouldn’t use them.

Keep your approval on risky actions

Set where each bot must stop: sending messages, publishing, paying, deleting, changing permissions and accepting legal terms. When a bot needs approval, it shows you what it wants to do, and you allow it once, always allow that kind of action, or deny it. The docs also describe “Ask first” rules under Auto-review in Settings. They always stop a matching action for you, such as “Ask first before sending any external email”.

Two details catch people out. An approval request from work that started without you, such as a routine or another bot, expires after about 10 minutes, and the action doesn’t run. Approval requests also don’t appear in group chats, so check each bot’s own chat. Start every new bot on read-only work and drafts, and widen what it can do once you trust what comes back.

Govern the cost

A team of bots does a lot of work, costs more than a chat window, and needs managing like any other team. Bots are automations you set up by talking, so unwatched bots multiply errors and costs along with benefits. Four habits keep that in check:

• Set spending limits. Your plan includes a weekly amount of usage, and some plans let you pay for more. Decide how much extra you’ll spend each month and set it as your monthly additional usage limit. On The X Subscription, it sits under Additional usage credits at grok.com/dashboard.
• Cap how much each bot runs. Keep routines to the schedule the job needs, use narrow triggers instead of broad ones like “every new message”, and pause routines you no longer need. Every bot reply counts towards your usage, including bots messaging each other, so keep group chats small.
• Give each bot stopping rules. Tell it what to do when a source is missing or stale, where to report half-finished work, and when to stop and ask.
• Check usage. Settings shows your weekly included usage and any extra usage. Review it weekly, as you would a team’s timesheets.

6. Share a bot with your team, securely

Personal bots handle your own work. A Team Bot suits one shared job, such as answering questions about your numbers or sorting requests posted in a Slack channel. Team Bots are for members of a Cursor team who have Grok Bot, and they’re in beta on Teams and Enterprise plans.

What makes sharing safe:

• Each teammate talks to the bot in their own private chat. The owner can’t read teammates’ chats, and teammates can’t read the owner’s.
• The team shares what’s saved on the bot: team memory, team how-tos, files, connected apps and shared keys. Each person also gets private notes that nobody else reads.
• Apps that need a sign-in act as whoever is talking. Each person connects their own account, so the bot reaches only what that person can. Apps set up with a key use the bot’s own key, which is the same for everyone, so give those keys read-only access where you can.
• Only the owner or a manager can change the shared setup. Publishing, unpublishing and deleting the bot stay with the owner, and the bot’s Slack app runs on the owner’s Slack connection.
• Routines stay personal and run as whoever set them up.

To set one up, create a new Team Bot, describe the team’s job, and let it walk you through apps, keys, how-tos and files. It stays a draft that only you can see until you publish it. Publish it from the “Publish to team” card in its chat, or ask the bot to publish. Teammates then find it in the app’s Team Bots list.

Once it’s published, you can add it to Slack as its own app, and teammates DM it or @mention it in a channel. In a Slack thread, the bot posts a review card before a risky action, and only the person who asked can allow or deny it. Every thread in a Slack channel shares one computer, so post nothing there that the whole channel shouldn’t see.

It knows who is who. In James’s Slack, the Team Bot reaches his personal bots when he asks it to, and leaves them alone when a teammate with access to the Team Bot asks. That matches the docs: in a channel thread, a Team Bot acts for the person who mentioned it and can hand work only to that person’s own bots.

7. Use the same pattern with other bots

The steps carry over, because every vendor sells the same wrapper: a job, a memory, a schedule and an approval step. Google’s Gemini Spark runs recurring tasks and triggers in the cloud and asks before high-stakes actions. Spark came first, announced on 19 May alongside Google’s new models. On 12 October Google folded it into a “Task” button inside Gemini. OpenAI’s dots have their own cloud computer, learn your preferences over time, and let you set rules for what they may do alone and what needs your approval.

If you want a team of bots, check how many each plan gives you. Grok Bot lets one person run many named bots that message each other. OpenAI’s plans include your first dot, with more to come, and Google has announced custom sub-agents for Spark. Some agents built for longer jobs, such as ChatGPT Work, let you pick a model. If your organisation must approve the model, check this before you commit.

Your options

James’s rules for a bot team

Mostly in his words, as a checklist to keep beside you:

1. “Nominate a primary bot. This means it can delegate to others and you’re not spread thin across 20 different contexts.”
2. “Give each bot a discrete job.”
3. Keep each job “small enough to be specialised and big enough to be meaningful”.
4. Bots share one computer, so they can see each other’s work, but they don’t have to actively absorb it all unless it’s relevant.
5. Connect only the apps your team needs, and say in each bot’s description which ones it may use. Grok Bot connects apps account-wide, so the description sets the limit.
6. Govern the cost. Set spending limits, cap how much each bot runs, give each one stopping rules, and check usage.

The wrapper bakes most of this in. In Grok Bot, the primary bot, Auto-review on risky actions, bots messaging each other, and routines all come built in. You train a bot by telling it what you want in the chat, with no config files to write. Team Bots add secure sharing and know who is asking.

Why this matters for teams

James Hallam, Softwired founder:

“This is a breakthrough for people in terms of productivity. People have seen some really good personal productivity gains from desktop AI, but bots open it up properly to teams, beyond what, say, Claude Cowork or Projects does. You’ve got the bot as a team member in a virtual workspace like a Slack channel, and it can then take action on shared context that’s defined by the chat, and by whatever else you give it. So that whole thing about intent, spec and QA happens within that. What we get in that virtual workspace is effectively a positive feedback loop on the work, with the feedback provided by the people reviewing the outputs and refining the inputs as they go to get a better result. And as you get better results, what you should see happen is that across teams you can now augment a process without fundamentally changing it, apart from putting it in a Slack channel with a bot.”

Choose for the wrapper

This part is our own inference. The longer a bot works for you, the more of your routines and preferences it holds, and the harder it becomes to leave. Pick the bot whose jobs, memory, schedules, access and approvals fit how your people already work.

If you’d like help setting up your first bot team, talk to us.

This article is licensed under CC BY 4.0.