Skills and routines

Turn a successful task into a repeatable process. Grok Bot uses two building blocks:

• A skill is a reusable set of instructions for how to do a task.
• A routine tells one Bot when to run a workflow: on a schedule, or when something happens, such as a Slack message, a GitHub, Linear, Sentry, or PagerDuty event, an email, or a webhook call.

Start with a one-time task. Make it reliable, save the method as a skill, and only then automate it.

A skill captures steps, decision rules, expected output, and safety boundaries. Skills are available across your Bots, although a Bot may need the relevant app or login to use one.

Ask:

Save the process we just used as a skill called “Weekly account health.” Include the source systems, risk definitions, output format, and the rule that customer contact always requires approval.

A useful skill states:

1. When to use it
2. Required inputs and access
3. The sequence of work
4. How to validate the result
5. What to return
6. What requires approval

Use Connect apps in the sidebar to discover and install supported apps and packaged skills. To use a skill, ask the Bot for it by name; use @ for Bots, groups, routines, and apps.

Private skills are one library shared by all your Bots. If the Bot can't find a private skill, open Connect apps in the sidebar, select the connected count next to the title, and enable it for the current Bot under Private skills.

If you belong to a team, you can publish a private skill so your teammates can use it. On desktop, open Connect apps, select the connected count next to the title, and open the skill. Choose Publish in its header. If you belong to more than one team, choose the team under Publish to.

A skill needs a description before you can publish it, because teammates and their Bots use the description to decide when it applies. After you publish, the button reads Published. Its menu offers Sync to push your later edits to the team's copy, Copy link, and Unpublish.

If publishing is refused, the message says why: you need to join a team first, or your team admin has turned off publishing for members, in which case ask an admin to publish the skill. Skills that came with the app or with a Bot's template can't be published.

When Teach a task is available, you can demonstrate a browser workflow instead of describing every step.

1. Open a one-to-one Bot conversation and its computer view.
2. Choose Teach a task.
3. Describe the result you are about to demonstrate.
4. Perform the workflow once.
5. Stop the recording and review the skill the Bot creates.
6. Test it on a safe example before scheduling it.

Teaching records visible computer interaction for up to ten minutes. It does not record microphone audio. Avoid exposing secrets during the demonstration; use the secure handoff flow for credentials.

The learned skill is a draft. Add decision rules, failure handling, and approval boundaries that may not be obvious from one example.

Teach-by-demonstration may be enabled gradually. If the control is not visible, ask the Bot to create a skill from written instructions and the completed task.

Ask the Bot that should own the recurring job:

Every weekday at 8:00 AM, run the Daily customer-risk skill against the current account list. Post a linked watch list in this conversation. Do not contact customers. If the source data is unavailable, report the failure instead of using old data.

Confirm:

• The owning Bot
• The schedule and time zone
• The input source
• The expected result
• The approval boundary
• What should happen when a source is missing

The Bot creates the routine, and it appears in the Bot's routines. Routines run in the cloud while your laptop is closed.

On the phone, you can also open the Bot's profile and tap Add routine under Routines. Grok Bot starts a message that begins “Set up a routine to”; finish the sentence and send it.

Schedules use the time zone in Settings, under Bot, labeled Timezone. Auto-detect follows this computer. Pick a zone when the routine should follow a different one, such as the office where the work belongs.

Ask for a schedule in plain words, like “every weekday at 8:00 AM” or “every 2 hours.” Then open the routine and check When to run, which shows the saved schedule in words. If it doesn't match what you meant, choose Edit and tell the Bot what to fix.

A new routine waits for its next scheduled time; it doesn't run when it's created. If you set up “every day at 8:00 AM” at 8:05, the first run is tomorrow at 8:00 AM. To try it right away, use Test.

A routine can start when something happens instead of on a schedule: a Slack message, a GitHub, Linear, Sentry, or PagerDuty event, an email to your Bot's own address, or a webhook call. Cursor account integrations start these routines; they're separate from the Slack or GitHub apps and may need their own connection. Ask the Bot for the trigger you want; the routine's When to run shows it in words, such as “When a Linear issue is created.” Only new activity counts: events from before the trigger existed don't start a run.

Define a narrow matching rule and a clear response:

When a message in #customer-escalations contains a support ticket link and the phrase “needs repro,” open the ticket, reproduce the issue in staging, and post a repro pack in this conversation. Never post back to Slack without approval.

Avoid broad listeners such as “every new message.” They create noise, consume usage, and increase the chance of acting on irrelevant input.

A Slack trigger is part of a routine, not the Slack app. The app lets a Bot post and read as the Slack user you connected; a trigger starts the routine when something happens in Slack. Connect Slack on the Cursor account that owns the Bot before you rely on it.

A routine can start when the Bot is mentioned, when a word or phrase is mentioned, when you react to a message, or on any message. It can watch one channel or all of Slack, and When to run shows the trigger in words, such as a phrase and a channel. Keep the channel and phrase narrow: a trigger on any message in a busy channel runs often and spends usage on messages that don't need the Bot.

Ask the Bot to add a webhook trigger to the routine, then open the routine on desktop. The Webhook section shows three fields:

• POST to is the URL.
• key is the secret. Senders include it as Authorization: Bearer <key>.
• header is that full header, ready to copy.

Click a field to copy it. Send an HTTP POST to that URL with the header and, optionally, a JSON body; the Bot receives the body with the routine instruction. A 200 response means Grok Bot accepted the call and started a run, not that the Bot has finished; check the Bot's chat for the result. Any other response means a run didn't start, so confirm that the routine isn't paused and that the request uses the current key.

If the routine shows Test, use it after creating or editing the routine: open the routine on desktop and choose Test. The button says Running… until the run finishes, and the result shows up in the Bot's chat. If the test can't start, you see Couldn't start a test run, or a message that explains why.

Some routines don't show Test; they still run on their schedule or trigger. For those, ask the Bot to do the same work once in chat with a safe input before you rely on the routine, then check the first scheduled run.

A test run performs real work. It can navigate websites, change files, and call connected tools. Use safe inputs and keep write actions behind approval.

Review:

• Whether it selected current inputs
• Whether the output meets the required format
• Whether every action has a source or audit trail
• Whether it stopped at the intended approval point
• Whether failure states are explicit

Create and change routines by asking the Bot in chat. To review them on desktop, click the Bot's name at the top of the chat to open its details. Routines are on the Details tab. Each row shows the routine's name and when it runs, or Paused; use the switch on the row to pause or resume it. If the Bot has no routines, you see Ask in chat to set a routine.

Open a routine to read its Instruction (what the Bot does on each run) and When to run (the schedule and the events that start it). A routine that a webhook call starts also shows Webhook. The buttons at the bottom are:

• Pause or Resume
• Test, when the routine offers it
• Edit, which starts a message to the Bot that begins “Edit your routine:” with the routine's name; add what should change and send it
• Delete routine (the trash icon), which asks you to confirm

You can also right-click a routine to Pause or Resume it, Test it, Edit it in chat, or Delete it.

On the phone, open the Bot's profile and find Routines. Tap a routine to see Active, Schedule, Next run, Instruction, and Run history. Turn off Active to pause the routine, and swipe the routine's row to delete it. Run history shows each recent run as Running, Succeeded, or Failed, with the reason for a failed run; No runs yet means nothing has started the routine yet.

A Bot can own up to 50 routines, and the app keeps the 20 most recent run records for each routine. Routine schedules must be at least five minutes apart. Deleting a routine stops its future runs and can't be undone. Deleting a Bot also removes routines owned by that Bot.

• The routine isn't Paused. On the phone, Active is on.
• When to run shows the schedule or trigger you expect, in the right time zone.
• A new schedule waits for its next time. Use Test to run it now.
• For Slack, the message is new, in the channel the trigger watches, and matches its phrase.
• For a webhook, the call returned 200 and used the current key.

Routines have hourly limits: all of your routines together can run up to 300 times an hour, and each routine up to 200 times an hour. A run past either limit fails with Automation run rate limit exceeded. If one routine keeps hitting its limit, ask the Bot to narrow its trigger or widen its schedule.

Some runs can also fail with this error because of a limit all Grok Bot routines share, even when your own routines run less than that. This is a known issue that is being fixed. A run that fails with this error isn't retried automatically, so rerun the routine yourself: use Test to run it now, or for a webhook, send the call again.

Each run spends usage, so a routine that runs often spends more than one that runs rarely. An hourly schedule, a short interval, or a Slack trigger on a busy channel can use a week of usage in a day. If your Weekly usage limit is running out faster than you expect, pause routines you don't need, then ask the Bot to widen schedules and narrow Slack triggers before you raise a plan or an on-demand limit. A routine that never runs doesn't spend usage; Test does, because it performs the work. See Plans and billing for weekly usage and the on-demand monthly limit.

To control unattended usage, Grok Bot may ask whether to keep routines running after a long period away and pause them if there is no response. Review paused routines when you return.

• Automate preparation before execution.
• Have the Bot draft, reconcile, or recommend first.
• Require approval for sending, purchasing, deleting, publishing, or changing production systems.
• Include a no-data and stale-data policy.
• Make retries idempotent where possible.
• Tell the Bot where to report partial completion.
• Re-test after a website, app, or source format changes.

For more on schedules, Slack triggers, and webhooks, see Routines. See Settings and notifications for time zone and usage controls, and Approvals, security, and privacy for automation boundaries.