Job cards: give every Grok Bot a clear role

If one of your Bots disappeared tomorrow, could you explain its job to a replacement in a minute? If not, you have a pile of helpers, not a team. Chapter 4 fixes that with job cards.

Four lines per Bot

A job card is a few plain lines with four parts:

• What it does, in one or two sentences.
• What it's allowed to do on its own.
• What it must bring to you first.
• How and when it reports back.

The third line is where your approvals live. In the book's example, the Friday email editor may pull pieces together and fix small errors on its own, but brings you the finished issue every Thursday before anything is sent, and leaves a note on the running page each evening.

Where cards live

Keep every card in one shared document or folder all your Bots can open, and put the same card in each Bot's standing instructions. The instructions keep the Bot on track day to day. The shared folder lets managers and the briefing Bot see how the whole team fits together. When you change a card, change both, and have the Bot confirm it updated its instructions.

Checklist

1. Write a four-part card for every Bot you have.
2. Give each Bot a plain name that says its job and business, like "Channel script bot", not a nickname or a number.
3. Store cards in one shared place and in each Bot's standing instructions.
4. When a Bot keeps getting something wrong, look for the fix in its card first.
5. When it keeps doing something useful you didn't ask for, add it to the card on purpose.
6. Read all the cards once a month to spot overlaps, gaps and Bots doing two jobs.

When a Bot isn't working out

Check three things: is the card clear, is the Bot doing more than one job, and does it have the examples it needs? Usually one of those is the problem. If it still isn't working, set up a fresh Bot with the card and the best examples, retire the old one, and keep a note of what went wrong.