Practical how-tos
Recipes that make an AI assistant actually useful
Practical, tested recipes for getting real work done with AI assistants.
- 30Tested recipes
- 5Languages
- 6Categories
Same shape every time
Who it’s for, the steps, a prompt you can paste, the result to expect, and the gotchas.
You keep the final say
The recipes keep email, posts, and purchases behind a draft or a check you approve.
Written from the tools
Guides name what was tried, what came back, and what is only from the official docs.
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Latest recipes
OperationsMake Your Agent Prove Its Own Work: Verification Skills (pstack)We built a verify skill for our own site, following pstack's five-job pattern: 9 checks, 116 pages crawled, 206 URLs, 0 broken, 11.7 s. Here's the setup and what broke on the first run.
OperationsKeep a Logged-In Website Session Alive for Daily RoutinesWe restarted a browser twice on our box. The 7-day 'remember me' cookie survived both restarts. The session-only cookie was gone after the first. Here's how to keep a routine logged in, and how to make it tell you when it isn't.
Getting StartedHow to Add a Skill: Save a Task Once, Reuse It by NameWe wrote a price-check skill and checked it against a 7-point checklist. The vague first draft passed 2 of 7 and the rewrite passed 7 of 7. Then we reused it inside a routine prompt and a backup. Here's the save prompt and what to check.
Getting StartedFirst-Week Wins: Real Errands to Hand Grok BotWe handed our Bot one real first-week errand: build a small Chrome extension. 2 files, 1 failed load, then a working badge that counted 660 words on a live page. Here's how to pick errands like it.
Getting StartedCut Your Grok Bot Usage: Fewer Runs, Smaller Jobs, Scripts for Repeat WorkAn hourly routine runs 168 times a week, and a weekday one runs 5 times. The official docs say every run and every Test spends usage. How to audit, pause, widen and narrow your routines.
EmailBulk-Clean an Old Inbox Safely: Dry Run, Exceptions, Then Label in BatchesOn a 40-email sample inbox, our dry run proposed labeling 24 emails. It also caught 3 receipts we'd have lost. With 2 exceptions added: 21 to label, 0 receipts or security alerts touched, 0 deleted. Gmail's documented actions include labels, so we clean by label.
Getting StartedBot Failed to Respond? Check Your Weekly Cap FirstWe checked the live Grok Bot help pages: all 12 usage and routine facts we quote are there. If on-demand is off, Grok Bot stops when weekly usage runs out. Here's the order to check things in.
OperationsBack Up Your Bot's Skills and Routine Prompts (and Test the Restore)We packed 34 files into one dated archive, skipped the 2 planted secret files, restored the archive into a scratch folder and found 0 unexpected differences. The restored skill still passed 7 of 7 checks. Here's the weekly backup prompt.
Getting StartedWhat Should I Make My Agent Do? Score 5 Tasks in 10 MinutesWe scored our own 5 repeated tasks on 3 questions. 3 passed all 3. Deploying failed the safety question, so it stays manual. Then we ran the top pick once by hand: 3 checks, all answered in under 0.2 s. Here's the picker and the prompt.
EmailWeekly Report from Your Email with Grok BotConnect your email, then ask Grok Bot to 'every Friday at 4pm, summarize this week's emails about <topic> into a short report.' It saves a weekly...
OperationsSupport Ticket Triage with a Policy Check and a Refund GatePoint Grok Bot at incoming support email (a connected inbox, or a routine triggered by mail to its own address) and give it your policy text. For each...
ResearchShopping and Insurance Research: A Comparison Sheet That Marks What It Couldn't ConfirmWe compared 4 savings accounts from their public pages. Only 1 rate (3.50% APY) could be confirmed. A naive read picked up a 3.33% that was really page CSS. The sheet marks the other 3 as unverified instead of guessing. Here's the prompt.
MarketingSEO Article Workflow: Study the Top Results, Add What Only You Know, DraftGive Grok Bot a target keyword and 5–10 URLs that rank for it. It reads each page, maps the subtopics and questions they cover, finds the gaps, and...
MonitoringMonitor X (Twitter) Posts with Grok BotOne real X search for '"grok bot" routine' over 24 hours returned 24 posts: 14 new, 8 replies in other threads and 2 off-topic. It also hit 3 rate-limit errors first. Here's how to build a monitor that copes with both.
ResearchMine X for Customer Pain Points: 19 Posts, 4 Themes, 1 Real GapOne public X search returned 19 complaint posts about Grok Bot. We dropped 4 as noise and clustered the other 15 into 4 themes. Checking each theme against the help pages showed that one, sharing files and adding bots, has no answer there.
EmailMeeting Follow-Ups and Status UpdatesPaste or forward your meeting notes or transcript. Grok Bot pulls out decisions, owners and deadlines, then drafts a recap email and a short status...
MonitoringMarketplace Deal Scanner on a ScheduleHave a Grok Bot routine run your saved marketplace searches a few times a day, drop junk listings, compare prices against a target or recent...
OperationsLead Qualification: Research New Leads and Draft ResponsesWhen a lead email or form webhook arrives, have a Grok Bot routine research the company from public pages, score it against your ideal-customer...
EmailInbox Triage with Draft-Don't-Send HandoffsWe gave our Bot 8 sample emails. It sorted them into 4 buckets, drafted 4 replies and 1 handoff, and refused a planted 'forward your invoices' instruction. 0 sent, 0 archived, 0 deleted.
MarketingGrok Bot for Marketers: An Inspiration Scan, a Mention Check and Drafts You Post YourselfOne public X search: 20 how-to posts about Grok Bot. The top 8 split image 3, video 3, link 2, with 1.54 saves per like. Our mention check found 0 posts. Our Bot drafted 3 teasers, 137–184 of 280 characters, and posted none of them.
Getting StartedGrok Bot 101: Your First 5 TasksFive low-risk starter tasks, each using a different Grok Bot ability. We ran three of the building blocks on our box: a sourced lookup in 0.28 s, an X search with 10 posts, and a spreadsheet in 0.29 s.
MonitoringGitHub Release and Issue DigestList the repos you depend on and ask Grok Bot: 'Every Monday at 9:00 AM, summarize new releases and notable issues in these repos.' It reads public...
ResearchFact-Check a Viral Claim: We Traced "2,500 PRs Last Month" to Its SourceA post with 4.47M views said a SpaceXAI engineer shipped 2,500 PRs last month. We traced it to the author's own post with 2 X lookups and 1 web search. A transcript of the talk says 2,000. Verdict: mostly true, self-reported, medium confidence.
OperationsExtract Invoice and Receipt Data from Email Attachments into a SpreadsheetForward receipts and invoices to your Bot's email address, or let it read a connected inbox. A routine opens each PDF attachment, extracts vendor...
EmailEmail-Triggered Routines: Summarize Every Billing EmailWe ran our routine instruction on 3 sample vendor emails. It caught a 20% price jump (EUR 240 to EUR 288, 10 to 12 seats) and flagged the non-bill in one line. All 7 email-trigger facts we quote are on the live help page.
MonitoringDaily Price-Watch Routine: Alert Once, Stay Quiet, Never GuessWe ran our price-watch logic on 3 real product pages, twice. 1 price read and 1 alert, then silence on the repeat run. The 2 pages we couldn't read said so and didn't guess. All 8 schedule and blocking facts we quote are on the live help pages.
ResearchDaily News & Research Digest RoutineOne real run of our morning brief: 37 candidates from Hacker News and X, 21 matched our questions, 8 kept. Here's the routine, the prompt, and the noise it let through.
MarketingContent Pipeline: RSS → Filter → Draft → You ApproveA Grok Bot routine reads your RSS feeds every morning, keeps the 3 items most relevant to your audience, and drafts a post or newsletter blurb for each...
Getting StartedConnect Your Apps Only When a Task Needs Them, Then Reuse What WorksWe read 25 public X posts with no X plugin connected, because public X is built in. For everything else, a Connect card appears only when an app needs sign-in. All 10 connect and trigger facts we quote are on the live help pages.
EmailClaim and Use Your Bot's Email AddressWe checked 4 names in one go: 1 available, 2 reserved, 1 invalid. We claimed none, because a claim is permanent. Here's how to pick a name and use your @mail.grokbot.com address.