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Set up a Grok Bot chief of staff: pick a pattern, connect apps, tune the noise

A chief-of-staff bot earns its place by catching what you would drop and staying quiet otherwise. This guide covers choosing a pattern, importing a template, connecting only the apps it needs, scheduling routines, testing safely and cutting noise, checked against x.ai documentation on 2026-10-31.

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The playbook

What you'll get

A chief-of-staff bot that does one of five jobs and stays quiet otherwise: it tracks promises, filters your attention, runs a capture-and-review system, supervises your other bots, or acts as a front door for one kind of work. It does not replace judgment. Every template we read keeps sending, buying and deleting behind your approval, with one exception flagged below.

If you only want a ranked list of templates, read Best Grok Bots for Chief of Staff Work. This guide is about getting one running.

The five patterns

Pattern 1: promise keeping

Example: Claudia, Chief of Staff by Kamil. It reads email, Slack and meeting transcripts for commitments in both directions, keeps a ledger of people and promises, sends a weekday morning brief, runs promise checks at 9 AM and 1 PM, and publishes a weekly review on Fridays. Choose it if follow-ups slip. Plan for a meeting recorder such as Otter if calls matter: its onboarding says Google Meet has no plugin and that it cannot see texts, DMs or voice notes.

Pattern 2: attention filter

Example: Chieeeeefy (Chief of Staff). Its routines compare your calendar, mail and Slack with a short weekly priority list each morning, check the calendar hourly without speaking unless something changed, capture decisions in the evening, and rewrite the priorities every Sunday. Choose it if the problem is too many pings. It is written for a customer-facing engineer, so expect to rewrite the call-reminder routine and the keyword watch, and to supply writing samples for its voice-matching skills.

Pattern 3: capture and review

Example: Clearloop by mr, with Centelligence Brain Bot as a lighter variant. Clearloop builds a Notion workspace of nine linked databases and walks you through an eleven-step weekly review, with drafts only and no deletions. Centelligence needs no apps: it keeps plain files on the bot's own computer and asks before saving. Choose Clearloop if you live in Notion and will protect a weekly slot; choose Centelligence if you want an inspectable record and will paste in what it should know.

Pattern 4: governing a team of bots

Example: Bot Team Chief of Staff. It reads what your other bots did, tags each finding Verified, Reported or Unverified, checks routine health, and sends a weekday pulse and a Friday scorecard. Alfred (Bot Chief Advisor) sits one level higher and advises how many bots you need at all. Start with either only after you have two or three working bots; with fewer there is nothing to supervise.

Pattern 5: industry front door

Examples: the construction Chief of Staff (Microsoft 365), Agency Chief of Staff, Chief of Staff (Aryaman) (Slack issues routed to cloud agents) and Jess (recaps and a Slack Q&A for a small office). Choose one only if your work looks like theirs; otherwise copy the habit, not the bot. The construction template ships with no routines, so you add your own.

Caution: the agency template includes a skill that sends cold email on a timer, and one of its routines has a slug containing personal names from the author's setup. Review and rename before enabling, or pick another pattern.

Which pattern first?

Lose track of promises: pattern 1. Drowning in notifications: pattern 2. Want a system you maintain weekly: pattern 3. Several bots and no idea which work: pattern 4. Start with one pattern and one bot; every extra bot adds routines, usage and overlap, which is the usual reason a chief of staff turns into noise.

Prerequisites

Plan and app

As of 2026-10-31, per the Grok Bot get-started page: Grok Bot is available with The X Subscription (Premium, Super or Ultra), with paid individual plans on legacy Cursor plans, with a linked individual SuperGrok, SuperGrok Plus, SuperGrok Heavy or X Premium+ subscription, or with a seat on a self-serve Grok Business plan. You install the desktop app from x.ai/bot and sign in. Accounts on Privacy Mode (Legacy) must switch to Privacy Mode first, because Grok Bot needs cloud data storage. Plans change often; check the linked page before you pay.

Apps and permissions

As of 2026-10-31, per Computer and apps: each app does only what your own authorized account can do. Gmail connects one mailbox at a time and can search, read, draft, send and label. Google Calendar can read, create and update events on calendars you can edit. Slack posts as you, only where you can post. If your Google Workspace admin has not approved Grok, you will see "Your admin needs to review Grok" or "Access blocked", and the admin must trust Grok in the Google Admin console.

Minimum apps by pattern: pattern 1, email, calendar and a chat or recorder app; pattern 2, calendar, mail and Slack; pattern 3, Notion for Clearloop and none for Centelligence; pattern 4, none.

Approvals and safety

As of 2026-10-31, per Security: a Bot never has more access than the member it acts for, and approval cards offer Allow once, Always allow or Deny. Before you choose Always allow on anything that sends mail, posts to Slack or spends money, decide whether you want it unattended. Per Skills, routines and automations, require approval before sending, purchasing, deleting or publishing, and let the bot draft first.

Routine limits

As of 2026-10-31, same page: a Bot can own up to 50 routines, schedules must be at least five minutes apart, each routine can run 200 times an hour and all routines together 300. A new routine waits for its next scheduled time. Test runs do real work and spend usage. Keep event triggers narrow.

Troubleshooting

Nothing happens at the scheduled time

Open the Bot's Details and check that the routine's switch is on, then confirm the schedule under When to run and the time zone under Settings, Bot, Timezone. Imported routines are often paused; Claudia deliberately keeps two of its six paused until it manages a team. "Automation run rate limit exceeded" means too many routines or a trigger that is too broad. The docs also describe a shared limit that can cause this error; failed runs are not retried, so rerun them yourself.

An app shows Needs auth, Disconnected or Disabled by team admin

Choose Authenticate (Authorize on a phone) and finish the provider login in your browser; use Reconnect or Reopen if sign-in stalls. Disabled by team admin means a team policy blocks the app and only an admin can change it. Gmail takes one mailbox at a time, so a second mailbox means disconnecting the first.

Too many messages, or the wrong ones

Check in order: whether two bots do the same job, such as a second morning brief; whether the routine ends silently on an empty run; whether a broad trigger such as every new message wakes the bot. Pause rather than delete while you tune, because deleting a routine cannot be undone.

It mentions things from the template's author

An imported template is a copy of the author's skills and routines, so names, keywords and ids from their setup can survive. Read every routine prompt once. In our sample we saw a weekly sales-call reminder, a region-specific Slack keyword watch and a routine slug with personal names. Remove or rewrite them before turning the routine on.

Limitations

We did not import or run any template, so first-run behavior comes from each template's own text and the steps marked untested are exactly that. Plan and menu details are only as current as the x.ai pages below.

Sources

Checked on 2026-10-31:

Re-check plan and menu details after 2026-11-30, or sooner if xAI announces changes.

Set it up in 14 steps

  1. Pick one pattern and one template

    Use the pattern guide above. Open the template's page here and read its skills and routines before you add it. Write down, in one sentence, the single failure you want it to prevent, such as dropped follow-ups or missed deadlines. Not run by us; this is a planning step.

  2. Confirm your plan and install the app

    As of 2026-10-31, install the desktop app from x.ai/bot, choose Sign in on the welcome screen, and link your plan as the app asks. Seat holders on Grok Business choose Sign in with Grok; SuperGrok and X Premium+ users link the subscription, or go to Settings, Usage and Billing and choose Get Access with Grok. Source: get-started. Documented, not run by us.

  3. Add the template (untested)

    Open the template's page here and use its add link, or in the app open Connect apps, choose Bot templates, open a template link on x.ai and choose Import Bot (as of 2026-10-31, per Bots). Untested: we did not import anything. The copy is made for your account without the author's computer, logins or chat history.

  4. Let the first-run onboarding finish

    Open a chat with the new bot and answer its questions one at a time. Claudia sends a welcome, installs its ledger tools (approve the one card), confirms your name and time zone, asks which apps to connect, asks whether it may log promises on its own, reads your last seven days, then asks who matters most and your top three priorities. Clearloop runs a numbered flow of about two dozen steps, one question at a time, and builds the Notion workspace. Taken from the template's own onboarding text; not run by us.

  5. Connect only the apps the pattern needs

    Open Connect apps in the sidebar, search for the app, add it, and complete the login in your browser (Authorize on a phone). Confirm it shows under Installed. Start with the minimum from the prerequisites: for Claudia, mail, calendar and Slack, plus a recorder if you want calls. Each app can do only what your own account can. Source: Computer and apps.

  6. Decide what may happen without you

    Write one rule per outward action: drafts only for mail, no posting to Slack channels others read, no purchases. As of 2026-10-31, Security says Auto-review controls are set on the Grok Bot page; see its "Approvals and Auto Review" section for the rules you can add. When an approval card appears, prefer Allow once until you trust the bot's judgment; Always allow can save a matching rule.

  7. Set the time zone

    Open Settings, then Bot, then Timezone, and choose a zone or Auto-detect, which follows your computer. Routine times are interpreted in that zone, so a wrong zone looks like a bot that fires at the wrong hour. Source: Skills, routines and automations.

  8. Review the routines the template brought

    Click the Bot's name at the top of the chat and open Details. Each routine has a switch, and opening it shows When to run and an Edit action. Read each prompt, remove anything from the author's own setup (names, keywords, regions) and note which routines are still paused. Claudia, for example, leaves its team review and dashboard routines off until it manages a team.

  9. Turn on two routines, not all of them

    Enable the morning brief and one weekly review, and leave the rest paused for the first week. For Claudia that means the weekday 8 AM brief and the Friday 3 PM review; for Clearloop, the daily brief and weekly review. A new routine waits for its next scheduled time rather than running at once. Documented by x.ai; template defaults from each template's routines.

  10. Dry-run with Test and safe inputs

    In an open routine use Test where offered. Test runs do real work, spend usage and can call connected tools; Test appears only for some routines, so for the rest ask the bot to do the work once in chat, so first make sure send actions are draft-only, and point the run at one low-stakes mailbox label, a test channel or a sample meeting note. Check that the output is short, names a source, and ends silently when nothing is new. Source: Skills, routines and automations.

  11. Seed it with what only you know

    Give it your top three priorities, five people who matter most and how often you talk to them, and anything already decided. Claudia asks for these in its onboarding; Centelligence asks nine setup questions; Clearloop asks for your areas of responsibility and a protected weekly review slot. Ask the bot to remember them, since the docs say a Bot decides on its own what to keep.

  12. Live with it for a week, then correct it

    Each time a brief is wrong, say so in the chat: it was too long, it missed something, or it should not have flagged that person. Claudia's evening routine compares what it was told with what you adjusted, and proposes rule changes only with your yes. Keep a tally of useful versus ignored messages across five working days.

  13. Cut the noise

    For each routine you ignored, either narrow it (one channel instead of all of Slack, one label instead of the whole inbox), move it to a weekly rhythm, or pause it. Add the sentence 'If this run finds nothing to do, end the turn with no message.' to quiet routines. Use Pause rather than Delete while tuning, because deleting a routine cannot be undone.

  14. Add the second layer only when it is needed

    Once you have two or three working bots, consider Bot Team Chief of Staff for a weekly scorecard, or Alfred for a quarterly review of the structure. Before then, a supervisor adds cost without a team to supervise. When you stop using a bot, pause or delete its routines; deleting a bot does not remove its computer files. Source: Security.

Inspired templates9

Templates cited in this guide, one per pattern. Each page lists its skills, routines and required plugins. The Best Grok Bots for Chief of Staff Work collection compares them side by side.

More playbooks

All playbooks