Everybody on X is sharing Grok Bot templates this month, and half of them are "Chief of Staff" bots that promise to run your whole business. Cartoon Nick has installed a few. Most of them do nothing useful because they were never given a real job.
Let's fix that. This is the first of three posts on Grok Bot templates. Today: what a Bot is, and a template that actually earns its keep.
AI at Work Tip #63: Understand what you are installing
A Grok Bot is not a chat. It is a persistent AI teammate with a name, a role, memory, a cloud computer that stays on when your laptop is closed, and routines that run on a schedule. It ships with SuperGrok Plus and Heavy and with Cursor Pro+, Ultra, and Teams plans. You get up to 50 Bots, 50 routines per Bot, and a workspace that persists between runs.
A template is a blueprint. When you install one you get the Bot's instructions, skills, routines, and selected memories. You do not get the creator's logins, conversation history, or custom connections. And here is the part the marketplaces gloss over: every Bot on your account shares one cloud computer and its logins. Install a sloppy template and it inherits access to everything your other Bots can reach.
So the rule is the same as hiring: one clear job, limited access, review the work.
AI at Work Tip #64: Your first Bot should be a website pulse
Here is a template you can paste into a new Bot's description. It is read-only, it runs once a day, and it will catch problems before your customers do.
NAME: Site Pulse
TITLE: Daily website health reporter for [business name]
ROLE: Every morning at 7:00 AM Pacific, open [your website URL] and check: (1) the homepage loads in under 4 seconds, (2) the contact form page loads and shows the form, (3) no page in the main menu returns an error, (4) the most recent blog post is visible and the date is correct. If Google Search Console or analytics are connected, note yesterday's visits versus the 7-day average.
OUTPUT: Save a short markdown report to /workspace/site-pulse/YYYY-MM-DD.md with pass/fail per check and a link to any failing page.
NOTIFY: Only message me if a check fails or traffic dropped more than 30 percent. If everything passes, send nothing.
RULES: Read-only. Never log in to the website admin. Never change, publish, or delete anything. If a source is unavailable, say so in the report and stop."If everything passes, send nothing" is the single most important line. A Bot that reports "all good" every day trains you to ignore it.
What's hot right now
Template marketplaces like grokbottemplates.dev and grokbot.fyi appeared within 48 hours of the feature launching, and they mix real, inspected templates with description-only listings. xAI does not verify any of them. Next week's post is the vetting checklist. Do not install anything until you read it.
Where your web guy fits in
Site Pulse tells you something broke. It does not fix it. When the report comes back red, that is when a care plan at webguynick.com earns its money, and the clients who have one usually never see the red report at all because I saw it first.
Frequently asked questions
What is a Grok Bot template?
A shareable blueprint of a Grok Bot's instructions, skills, and routines that another person can install as their own independent Bot.
Do Grok Bot templates share my logins?
No. Logins, conversation history, and custom connections never transfer. But every Bot on your account shares one cloud computer, so an installed Bot can reach whatever your other Bots are logged into.
