Grok Bot is not another chat window. Each item in the sidebar is an always-on teammate with its own cloud computer. That is useful until you have a Coder in one chat, a Writer in another, a Researcher in a third, and two live projects. Then the signal drowns.
SpaceXAI engineer Eric Zakariasson published the setup he is still testing: one project, one channel, one roster. This article turns that field note into something you can copy, and points at the job briefs we already keep in the Grok Bot prompts library.
This is not a grok.com chat guide. If you want Imagine or the X chatbot, use Grok prompts instead.
The problem a pile of chats cannot solve
Separate chats are fine for one job. They fail when two projects run at once. You cannot filter which bot is talking about which deadline. You cannot see who is blocked. You cannot reuse a Coder you already named without hunting for the thread.
Humans already solved this. A project gets a spec, a plan, and a channel. People claim tasks. A manager watches the board. Zakariasson's experiment is to give bots the same shape, not a smarter single chat.
The pattern: channel, roster, board
For each project you create three things that stay in sync:
- A Grok Bot channel in the sidebar. That channel is the room. You and the roster talk there.
- A roster inside that channel. Named bots with one job each. You sit in the room too.
- A board the bots are allowed to update. Zakariasson used two Notion databases, Projects and Tasks. A spreadsheet works if that is what you already open.
The interesting part, in his words, is that the more you build this, the more it looks like a system built for people: a board, a manager, specialists claiming work, a blocked column, a channel.
A projects manager, not a second you
He did not staff every channel by hand. He created a projects manager bot (plural on purpose). That bot owns the meta work:
- Create a project row
- Open a channel
- Staff the channel from bots you already have
- Keep the board honest
It does not write the code or the blog post. It coordinates. Paste a job brief from Grok Bot ops prompts or Grok Bot roster prompts and keep send, pay, delete, and production changes off its list.
Staffing rules worth stealing, rewritten as things you can paste:
- Reuse a bot you already named before you create a new one.
- Propose at most five bots besides the project manager. Six names in a channel is plenty.
- Create a new bot only when nothing on the bench fits, and only after you say yes.
That last rule is the one people skip. A new specialist is cheap to spawn and expensive to remember. Your roster page has briefs for cleaning a list of bots that grew in the dark.
How a day actually runs
Once the channel exists, you talk in it. You scope tasks with the roster. The project manager watches progress and updates the databases. When a bot is stuck, it marks the card Blocked and pings you in the channel. Often you just watch cards move.
That only works if each bot has a job it will not leave. A Writer that also "helps" with deploys will pollute both memories. Named agents, scoped memory: the same lesson as the PM guide.
What you still do
The bots do not create, rename, or delete each other unless you approve it. They do not invent a project that is not on the board. They do not mark a task done because the write-up sounds done.
You:
- Say yes or no to a new bot
- Unblock the card that is waiting on a login, a 2FA prompt, or a human decision
- Close the project when the board is actually empty
If a login screen appears, you take over the computer. Never paste a password into chat. Put keys on the secret card. The hub page walks through that first hour: Grok Bot prompts.
A first brief you can paste
Use this to stand up the manager. Replace the brackets.
You are the projects manager on my shared Grok Bot computer. This is a standing job, not a grok.com chat.
Outcome: Keep [PROJECTS BOARD] and [TASKS BOARD] in sync with the channels I name. For a new project, propose a channel name, a roster of at most [6] bots reused from [ROSTER LIST], and the first [5] tasks. Do not create a new bot unless I say yes.
Sources: [PROJECTS BOARD], [TASKS BOARD], [ROSTER LIST], the project channel.
Constraints:
- Do not send messages, enroll anyone, make payments, delete records, or change production settings.
- If a login or 2FA appears, ask me to take over the computer.
- If a source is missing, say so. Do not invent tasks or people.
Deliverable: Channel name, proposed roster, task table with owner and blocked-or-not, links.
Review point: I open the channel and I accept the roster.
More briefs like this live on Grok Bot Slack prompts (the room) and Grok Bot routines (the clock).
Source
Field setup: How I run multiple teams of Grok Bots by Eric Zakariasson on x.ai. We rewrote the pattern for a first-time visitor and tied it to copy-paste job briefs. His version is the experiment log. Ours is the checklist.