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Building with AI

How I Set Up a Team of AI Bots in Grok Bot (and Keep Fixing It)

How I set up a team of 22 AI bots in Grok Bot to run my apps, podcast and job hunt, the rules that keep them safe, and what I copied from other setups.

15 min readBy Nina Kolari

To set up a team of AI bots in Grok Bot without drowning in them, start with one front door. Mine is a Chief of Staff bot: I talk to it, and it sends the work to the right bot. Give every bot the same ground rules, approve every change yourself, and expect to keep editing the setup as you learn.

That’s the short version. Here’s the honest one.

I changed careers at 50, in July 2025. I took a 4-month iOS course. I’ve built 20+ apps. I’ve won two hackathons: a Cursor hackathon on 6 December 2025, and the Luni Mobile App Hackathon, where I won Innovation and Scalability. I host the App Minded podcast, I’m a Lovable Expert, and I run several websites.

That’s a lot of things for one person.

So I recently started building a team of AI bots in Grok Bot. I now have 22 of them: 21 specialist bots plus my Chief of Staff. The newest, SEO Post Ranker, was added while I was writing this post, which is a good example of how often this setup changes. They help me with my apps, my podcast, my websites, YouTube and my job hunt.

I have multiple apps and businesses, and this lets me keep track of everything. It also helps with coding. Just offloading everything here has been a huge relief. And honestly? I’m stupidly excited about what these bots can do.

This isn’t a “look how perfect my system is” post. I’m still changing it.

I’m also filming a YouTube version for my personal channel this weekend — I’ll add the link here when it’s live.

How do you set up a team of AI bots in Grok Bot?

Start with one Chief of Staff bot as the only layer between you and everything else, then add one bot per job. That’s what I did: SEO bots per site, an app manager, a coach, a job hunter and an advisor-only tech team.

The idea was simple. I didn’t want to open 22 different chats and remember which bot does what.

So that’s how it works. I voice brain-dump to my Chief of Staff. It pulls out the pieces and routes each one to the right bot.

If you’ve read my Building With AI guide, this is the same idea in practice: AI agents (I call mine bots) doing real work for you. You don’t need to be a developer to build a system like that. You need to know what you want each piece to do.

Who is on my team of AI bots?

I created most of these very quickly. A few already existed.

Bot What it does for me
Chief of Staff My one front door. I brain-dump to it, and it routes the work
Coach My goals. The other “boss-level” bot
4 SEO/AEO bots One per site (canaibuild.com, ninakolari.com and 50plusnomad.com), plus SEO Post Ranker, which reviews every blog post on all my sites to get each one ranked
App Manager My apps
Ideas Ideas
Social Media Social media
Calendar My calendar
YouTube YouTube planning
Scriptwriter Scripts
Job Hunter My job hunt. It needs my approval before each application
Tech team (5 bots) Tech Lead, QA and Release, Senior Backend Engineer, Engineer and Designer. Advisors only
Product and content team Writer, who drafts my blog posts and other writing
Podcast Bot and Podcast Marketing Bot My podcast, App Minded. These existed before this week
Grok Bot Now my builder for the SheBuilds hackathon. Also existed before

Two rules in that table matter more than the rest.

The tech team never writes code. They advise. Every change needs my approval. I’m the one who says yes.

Job Hunter asks before every application. Nothing goes out with my name on it unless I’ve seen it.

One real result already: my podcast management was a mess, and the bots organised it. Podcast Bot now runs my App Minded guest pipeline, from the questionnaire applications that land in a Google Sheet through to post-launch messages.

How do you manage 22 AI bots without getting overwhelmed?

Talk to one bot only, and work toward letting only that bot notify you. For me, that’s my Chief of Staff, plus a weekday morning digest at 8:03 AM Bangkok time. I’m not fully there yet.

Pretty quickly, I had one thought:

“How the hell are we gonna manage all these bots?”

That many bots is a lot of chats and a lot of updates.

So I made two decisions:

  1. I only talk to Chief of Staff. Not to 22 bots. To one.
  2. I get a morning digest at 8:03 AM on weekdays. One summary instead of a steady drip of updates. It covers today’s calendar and deadlines, a batched summary of what all the bots did, what’s waiting on my decision, and my top 3 priorities.

What rules should AI bots follow so they don’t cause damage?

Give every bot the same short list of things it must never do without you, and require your approval for every change. Here are the ground rules all my bots follow:

  • Ask me before starting any big write-up.
  • Never delete anything from my Google Drive or Sheets.
  • Never send emails for me.

If you don’t write them down, a bot doesn’t know them.

How do you keep improving an AI bot setup as you learn?

Copy good patterns from other people, let your bots propose edits, and approve each one yourself. Then add a regular check-up that suggests changes but makes none.

My first round of edits came after I watched Peter Yang’s video with the Grok Bot team, “We Built Grok Bot. Here Are Our 14 Best Bots.”

Some of it I already had. Some of it was new to me. The ideas I took from it:

  • A chief of staff bot as the router (I had that one)
  • Each bot’s description lists its teammates’ IDs, so bots know who to hand work to
  • An engineering lead bot that coordinates the other engineering bots
  • A personal “mode” skill: one shared file with how you talk and what your rules are
  • A monthly bot audit
  • @mentions in group chats
  • Watch a task, make it a skill, make it a routine

So I had my bots propose changes, and I approved each one before anything happened. Then I applied 7 edits across the 20 specialist bots I had at that point:

  1. Every bot got its teammates’ contacts and handoff rules.
  2. Tech Lead as coordinator. The Tech Lead now coordinates the tech team and gives me one combined recommendation.
  3. Group chat manners. In a group chat, only the bot I @mention answers. The others reply only if they add something.
  4. A shared “Nina mode” voice-and-rules skill that every bot uses.
  5. The original Grok Bot became my SheBuilds builder.
  6. A proper job description for Podcast Bot.
  7. Podcast Marketing Bot got clear lanes versus the Social Media and YouTube bots.

I also added a monthly bot check-up. It looks at the whole setup and proposes changes. It makes none. I decide.

What do other Grok Bot users recommend?

Have one front door, keep bots quiet when nothing’s new, keep project group chats small, reuse bots before creating new ones, and watch what your routines cost. Here’s who said what.

Thomas Kim: one bot per app feature

Thomas Kim (Your Average Tech Bro, also @youraveragetechbro on TikTok) explains his setup in “How I Use Grok Bot To Run My Software Factory.”

The setup has one “feature owner” bot per app feature. When something needs building, the bot launches a cloud agent to build it. Then it reads the merged change, so its knowledge stays current. The bots check their work by using the app in their own browser. The feature owners sit together in a group chat, so they catch it when one feature breaks another. And a 24/7 error-fix bot sends each error to the right owner.

It’s a much bigger setup than mine.

Josh Kim: one “Bot Boss” front door

In Grok Bot for Work, Josh Kim describes one “Bot Boss” as the front door. Same idea as my Chief of Staff.

Two other things I took from it: bots stay silent when there’s nothing new, and routines are created switched off until you turn them on.

Brooke Wright: the toggle is the honest control

Brooke Wright’s setup guide covers “middle manager” bots, turning off phone notifications per bot, and logging work to a Sheet, because you can’t read a bot’s memory. It also recommends switching off risky connector tools rather than just telling the bot not to use them. This is the line I keep thinking about:

“The toggle is the honest control. The instruction is a hope.”

In plain words: writing “never delete anything” in a bot’s instructions is a request. Switching off the bot’s ability to delete is a rule.

Eric Zakariasson: small group chats and a Blocked column

In How I run multiple teams of Grok Bots, Eric Zakariasson recommends one group chat per project, with a maximum of about six bots, and a task board with a Blocked column. And reuse bots before creating new ones, the opposite of what I did when I started.

Lingxi Li: let a bot learn from mistakes

In Grok Bot for Engineering, Lingxi Li describes an ops bot that reviews mistakes and updates the rules, nightly audits, and a warning that “P0” urgency burns tokens. Marking everything as top priority costs you.

Ryan Perry: six bots running a game studio

In Grok Bot for mobile app development, Ryan Perry describes six bots running a game studio, and using “Teach a task” for click-paths with no API. In other words, you show the bot the clicks for a job that has no direct connection it can use.

Michael Fenech: a weekly huddle and questions before routines

Michael Fenech shared a weekly 15-minute chief of staff huddle, built on 7 questions, plus 7 questions to ask before building a routine.

The official word on routine costs

Grok Bot’s own help page on routines has a warning worth reading twice: a busy routine “can use a week of usage in a day.”

And if you’re brand new, Matt Palmer has a guide called Grok Bot 101.

What am I changing in my Grok Bot setup now?

Right now I’m cutting notifications down to one bot, adding a weekly huddle, tightening my no-delete rules, quieting routines and starting a shared work log. Here’s each one.

1. Routing everything through Chief of Staff

I was flooded with notifications. More than 20 bots, all wanting to tell me things. So now every bot reports to Chief of Staff, which batches their updates into one morning digest. I’m still switching off the other bots’ notifications one by one.

2. A weekly 15-minute huddle with Chief of Staff

This comes from Michael Fenech, though my list is shorter than his 7 questions. Every Monday, about 15 minutes, just me and my Chief of Staff. We go through:

  • What Chief of Staff learned about me
  • What I corrected twice
  • What’s out of date
  • Repeated work that should become a routine
  • A usage check
  • Bots that are noisy or idle

3. A written no-delete and no-edit-without-approval rule

The no-delete and no-edit-without-approval rule is written into the shared skill every bot follows, and into my Google Sheets, Calendar and Notion connector instructions. But after Brooke Wright’s line, I know instructions are a hope. So my next step is switching the delete tools off and adding an approval rule.

4. A usage check

Routines stay quiet when nothing has changed, because every run costs usage. And a busy routine can use a week of usage in a day.

5. A shared work log

Every bot appends what it did to one shared sheet. I can’t read a bot’s memory, but I can read a sheet. It also feeds the batched summary in my morning digest.

What I’m parking for later

Thomas Kim’s feature-owner setup. Not yet.

What would I tell you if you’re setting up your own AI bot team?

Start small, set your rules first and approve every change. I’ve only recently started, so these are notes, not a playbook.

  • Start with one front door. One bot you talk to, which routes everything else. Peter Yang’s video and Josh Kim’s guide both describe this too.
  • Write your ground rules on day one. What can a bot never do? Delete? Send emails? Write the rules down, and switch off what you can.
  • Approve the changes yourself. Let bots propose. You decide.
  • Watch notifications and usage early. I got flooded, and I’m still taming it.
  • Expect to keep editing. Mine changes every time I learn something.

For the bigger picture, start with Building With AI. And if you’ve been doing repeat jobs by hand in Claude, these little apps might be a better first step than a whole bot team. If you want help with the thinking, research and automating side of AI, that’s what my AI Power User workshop is for. It’s live on 15 October.

I’ll keep changing it. That’s how I learn: I build something, notice what doesn’t work and change one thing. If you’re scared to start because your setup won’t be perfect, read how to start before you feel ready.

Pick one job you’d hand to a bot this week. Write its ground rules before you write anything else. Then let it propose, and you decide.

Frequently asked questions about setting up a Grok Bot team

How many bots should I start with in Grok Bot?

Start with one: a chief of staff bot that routes your work, then add bots one job at a time. I went to 22 bots fast, and quickly asked myself: “How the hell are we gonna manage all these bots?” Eric Zakariasson suggests reusing bots before creating new ones.

What is a chief of staff bot?

It’s one bot that sits between you and all your other bots. You talk to it, and it sends each piece of work to the right bot. Josh Kim’s guide calls it a “Bot Boss.” Mine is called Chief of Staff, and every other bot reports to it.

How do I stop getting too many notifications from my bots?

I’m routing every bot’s updates through Chief of Staff into one weekday digest at 8:03 AM, and switching off the other bots’ notifications. Brooke Wright recommends turning off phone notifications per bot. Josh Kim’s setup keeps bots silent when there’s nothing new.

Can my AI bots send emails or delete files?

My ground rules say they must never send emails for me or delete anything from my Drive or Sheets. Brooke Wright’s advice is to switch off risky connector tools, because “the toggle is the honest control. The instruction is a hope.” My no-delete and no-edit-without-approval rule is written into the shared skill every bot follows, and into my Google Sheets, Calendar and Notion connector instructions. My next step is switching the delete tools off and adding an approval rule.

Can Grok Bot routines get expensive?

They can. Grok Bot’s help page on routines says a busy routine “can use a week of usage in a day.” Every run costs usage, so my routines stay quiet when nothing has changed, and I check usage in my Monday huddle.

How do I know what my bots actually did?

Have every bot write what it did to one shared sheet. You can’t read a bot’s memory, as Brooke Wright points out, but you can read a sheet. So I’ve added a shared work log that every bot appends to.

Do I need to know how to code to run a bot team?

No. My tech team bots never write code. They advise, and I approve every change. I took a 4-month iOS course, but running this setup is about deciding what each bot does and setting the rules, not coding.

Sources and further reading

Sources checked on 9 October 2026.