How I use Grok Bot

I set up an executive assistant team with Grok Bot in an afternoon. It's still the most fun I've had with AI.

Grok Bot runs on my desktop and on my phone. Most of the time I use the phone, and I don't type. I call the bot and tell it what I need.

I talk to one bot, my chief of staff, and it hands work to the others. Each bot has one job. None of them does another's work.

This is what the assistant does for me, and the rules that keep it from doing anything I'd regret.

Mostly by voice

Most of what I ask for happens while I'm out. I'm usually walking or driving, or between two things. I call the bot, say what I need, and hang up. "Add this to my notes." "Move that call to Thursday and draft the reply." "What's left on my plate today."

My MacBook stays at home or in the office, locked but online. The bot can still use it while I'm away. It adds things to Apple Notes, opens what it needs to open, and checks how my cloud coding sessions are doing. So when I ask how that work is going, I get an answer without going back to the laptop.

Inbox and the morning brief

The chief of staff reads my email, my calendar, Notion and my Apple Notes.

Everything it finds goes into one of four buckets: needs me today, can wait, FYI and noise.

The sorting is most of the value. An inbox is one long list where the email that matters sits next to a newsletter. Now the few things that need me are at the top, and the rest waits until I have time for it.

Every weekday morning it sends me a brief. Today's meetings, invites I still owe an answer, what needs me today, what moved since yesterday. On a quiet morning the whole brief is one line. A brief that always finds ten things is padding.

Every evening it runs a junk-mail sweep. Clear junk gets archived. Only the clear junk.

Meetings

Meetings are where it saves me the most.

Before a meeting it does a prep pass. It reads the calendar, the agenda in Notion, the latest notes and whatever came in about it, and hands me one page. I walk in already caught up.

It drafts the invites and the replies. Someone wants to meet, it checks my calendars, finds a slot and writes the answer. I read it and press Send.

It also catches clashes. My calendars don't talk to each other. The assistant reads all of them, so when two things land on the same hour it tells me before I find out the hard way.

Bots draft, I press Send

I set two rules for the whole team.

Bots only draft. I press Send.

Nothing gets accepted, declined or deleted without my yes.

The chief of staff can write the reply to an email, and it often does. It can see an invite and tell me it clashes with something. It can't send the reply and it can't answer the invite. Those are my keystrokes.

This sounds slower than it is. Reading a draft and pressing Send takes seconds. Writing the reply was the slow part, and the bot does that now. A bot sending the wrong thing to the wrong person would cost me a lot more than a few seconds.

The rules also make the rest easier. I can give the bots read access to almost everything, because reading is safe. Acting is where the risk is, so acting stays with me.

Taking care of stuff

A lot of my week is small admin. Reminders, follow-ups, forms, the thing someone asked for three emails ago. None of it is hard. It just piles up.

That's the assistant's job now. It keeps track, drafts what needs drafting and tells me when something needs me.

It orders my work lunch too. It's a small task, but it means I don't have to stop for it in the middle of the day.

It can do groceries the same way. It builds the list and fills the cart, and I check out.

Same with restaurants. I say where, when and how many, it finds what's open and gets the booking ready. I confirm.

Trends

I like knowing what's going on in my field. I don't like scrolling for it.

So there are two trend scouts, Ticker and Signal. Each one watches its own area and brings me what's worth knowing. I read what they bring me and follow the threads that look interesting.

There's also a marketing bot that helps me with X. It drafts posts, I post them myself. Same rule as email.

It doesn't always get my voice right. This week the first set of drafts didn't sound like me, so I asked for a more casual redo. A draft is cheap to throw away, which is why drafting is a good job for a bot.

Start with one

If you want to try this, start with the morning brief.

Give the bot read access to your email and calendar. Give it no permission to send, accept, decline or delete anything. Have it sort what it finds into needs me today, can wait, FYI and noise, and hand you one page every weekday.

Read it for a week and fix the instructions where it gets things wrong.

Add the next bot when you catch yourself doing the same task twice.