Most small businesses have a job that someone does every Monday by hand: copying numbers from one tool into another, checking which quotes went quiet, chasing the same three suppliers. Grok Bot can learn a job like that and run it on a schedule. This guide explains how skills and routines work, which job to start with and how to keep the result under your control.
Two building blocks: skill and routine
The Grok Bot documentation separates the method from the timing. A skill is a reusable set of instructions for how to do a task. A routine tells one Bot when to run a workflow, on a schedule or, where supported, after an event (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
The recommended order is worth copying: start with a one-time task, make it reliable, save the method as a skill and only then automate it (Grok Bot, skills and routines). Owners often want to jump to the schedule. A routine built on a method nobody has checked just repeats the mistake every week.
Pick the right first job
A good first routine has four properties:
- It repeats on a fixed rhythm, weekly or daily.
- The inputs live in tools the Bot can reach, such as your inbox, a spreadsheet or your CRM.
- The result is something you read, such as a list, a summary or a draft.
- A wrong result is annoying and easy to spot, and it doesn't cost money.
Examples that fit: a Monday list of quotes with no reply after ten days, a Friday summary of new enquiries from the website form, or a monthly check of which subscriptions renewed. Examples that don't fit yet: paying suppliers, sending price changes to customers or editing the live website.
If you are not sure where your recurring work sits, our article on approvals that outlive the app shows how to map a process before you automate any part of it.
Do the job once with the Bot
Start in a normal conversation. Give the Bot the task the way you would brief a new assistant: where the data is, what to skip and what finished looks like. Correct it until the result is right.
Then ask it to save the method. The documentation suggests a prompt along these lines: save the process we just used as a skill, include the source systems, the definitions, the output format and the rule that customer contact always requires approval (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
According to the same page, a useful skill states when to use it, the inputs and access it needs, the sequence of work, how to validate the result, what to return and what requires approval. Skills are shared across your Bots, although a Bot may need the right connector or login to use one (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
Or show it how you do it
For browser work that is hard to describe, Grok Bot has Teach a task, where available. You open a one-to-one conversation and the Bot's computer view, describe the result, perform the workflow once and stop the recording. The Bot turns that into a skill you review (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
The documentation sets clear limits. Teaching records visible computer interaction for up to ten minutes and no microphone audio. You should avoid exposing secrets during the demonstration and use the secure handoff for credentials. And the learned skill is a draft: one example rarely shows the decision rules, failure handling and approval boundaries you need (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
Take a small accounting office as an example: every month someone downloads statements from a bank portal and saves them in the client folder. Showing that once takes a few minutes. The demonstration won't show what to do when the portal asks for a new login, or when a statement for the month isn't there yet. Those rules have to be written in before the task goes on a schedule.
That last point is where most of the value sits. When you demonstrate, you skip the cases that went fine. Add them in writing, for example an empty spreadsheet or a portal that is down, and say what the Bot should do in each case.
Turn the skill into a routine
Ask the Bot that should own the job to create the routine. The documentation's example is a weekday 8:00 run of a skill against a current list, with results posted in the conversation, a rule not to contact customers and an instruction to report a failure instead of using old data (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
Before you confirm, check six things the page lists: the owning Bot, the schedule and time zone, the input source, the expected result, the approval boundary and what happens when a source is missing. Routines run in the background while your laptop is closed (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
Some practical limits from the same page: a Bot can own up to 50 routines, schedules must be at least five minutes apart and the app keeps the 20 most recent run records per routine. Deleting a routine is immediate and has no undo (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
Test before you trust it
Every routine has a Test run, and the documentation is direct about it: a test run performs real work. It can navigate websites, change files and call connected tools, so use safe inputs and keep write actions behind approval (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
After the test, review whether the routine picked current inputs, whether the output has the format you asked for, whether each action has a source or audit trail, whether it stopped at the approval point and whether failures are reported clearly. Repeat the test after a website, connector or source format changes.
It also helps to prepare test data that can't hurt anyone: a copy of the spreadsheet instead of the original, a test customer in the CRM or a folder you can clear without regret. If the routine writes emails, let the test send them only to you as drafts.
For a small business, a simple habit works: run the routine for two weeks with you reading every result. If you corrected nothing in the second week, it has earned a lighter check.
Keep the approval point where it hurts
The documentation's advice on designing routines for trust fits on a sticky note: automate preparation before execution, and require approval for sending, purchasing, deleting, publishing or changing production systems (Grok Bot, skills and routines).
Grok Bot gives you the tools to hold that line. Settings now calls saved approval rules Custom Rules, and approval cards quote the Bot's instruction so you can see what you are agreeing to (Grok Bot changelog). The security pages describe Auto Review as a complement to least privilege and explicit approval boundaries (Grok Bot approvals, security and privacy), which is the right way to think about it.
Watch the usage
Routines consume usage even when nobody is watching. The documentation warns against broad event listeners such as every new message, because they create noise, consume usage and increase the chance of acting on irrelevant input (Grok Bot, skills and routines). Grok Bot may also pause routines after a long period without a response from you, so check paused routines when you come back from holiday.
Grok Bot usage resets weekly (Grok Bot overview). A routine that runs every day at 8:00 uses it five or seven times a week before anyone asks the Bot a single question. Start with a slower schedule and increase it once you see how much is left. A weekly overview is often enough where a daily report seemed necessary.
A first routine in one afternoon
- Choose one weekly job whose result you read.
- Do it once with the Bot and correct it until it is right.
- Save it as a skill with inputs, checks, output and approval rule written out.
- Create the routine and confirm the owner, schedule, source and failure behaviour.
- Use Test run on safe data, then read every result for two weeks.
- Write down which accounts the routine touches.
If you want an overview of what else changed in the product recently, start with what changed in Grok Bot since launch.
When a routine starts to touch your CRM, quotes or follow-ups, it becomes part of your sales process. Designing that safely is what our CRM and sales automation work covers.