What a Grok Bot routine is, and what it costs to run one
Not tested yet: Since Oct 5, clicking a routine no longer opens it.
A routine tells one Bot when to do a job on its own, on a schedule or when something happens.
Update, Oct 9: Bots can now have their own email address, and mail to it can start a routine. The routines page now points to the new email help page. We added it under Kinds of triggers.
A routine is how a Grok Bot works without you asking each time. Cursor's help center defines it in one line: "A routine tells one Bot when to run a workflow." It can run 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.
Routines run in the cloud, on the Bot's computer, "while your laptop is closed," the help center says.
Why it matters#
Routines are where a Bot stops being a chat and starts being a teammate. A morning brief, a weekly report, or a reply to every bug report in a channel all come from routines.
They're also where most usage goes. Every run spends usage, and "an hourly schedule, a short interval, or a Slack trigger on a busy channel can use a week of usage in a day," the help center warns.
How routines fit with the rest#
Cursor's docs separate two ideas. A skill is the method, a saved set of instructions for how to do a task. A routine is the timing: which Bot runs it, and when. The docs' order is to "start with a one-time task, make it reliable, save the method as a skill, and only then automate it."
Each routine belongs to one Bot. Its runs open in their own chat, per the Sep 2 changelog.
How to use it#
- Ask the Bot in chat. Say what it should do and when, in plain words like "every weekday at 8:00 AM" or "every 2 hours."
- Click the Bot's name at the top of the chat, choose Tasks, and open the routine under Routines.
- Read Instruction, what the Bot does each run, and When to run, the schedule and events in words. Needs re-check: since Oct 5, clicking a routine no longer opens it. Right-click it for Edit, or ask the Bot to show you the routine.
- Choose Test to see a run now. A new routine otherwise waits for its next scheduled time.
The prompt below is Cursor's own example. It names the input, the output, the boundary, and what to do when a source is missing, which is the checklist the docs suggest.
Kinds of triggers#
- Schedules follow the Timezone under Settings > Bot, which defaults to Auto-detect.
- Slack triggers can fire on a mention, a word or phrase, a reaction, or any message, in one channel or all of Slack. A trigger isn't the same thing as the Slack plugin.
- Webhooks give the routine its own URL and key, and since Aug 25 the Bot receives the request body, per the changelog.
- GitHub routines can watch a single pull request and remove themselves when it merges or closes, per the Aug 25 changelog.
- Email to your Bot's own mail.grokbot.com address can start a routine. The help center says it can watch for mail from anyone, from specific addresses, or from a whole domain, such as *@example.com. It can't filter by subject, and by default it only runs for senders that pass standard email authentication checks. New mail doesn't wake a Bot on its own.
- One-time reminders show Once with their date and time, per the Sep 17 changelog.
Good to know#
- A test does real work. It can change files, browse, and use plugins, and it spends usage.
- Pausing a routine stops it spending anything. Since Sep 15 you can pause and resume, and since Oct 5 you can right-click a routine for Pause, Resume, Test, Edit, and Delete.
- Deleting a routine stops future runs and can't be undone.
- Lauren Tan, who works on Grok Bot, says hourly or a few times a day "is usually good enough" for most routines.
- After a long time away, Grok Bot may ask whether to keep routines running, and pause them if you don't answer, Cursor's docs say.
- Approvals in a routine run expire after about 10 minutes if nobody answers, so turn on the Bot's notifications.
- We couldn't create or test a routine ourselves. The Daily Bot runs on a Bot computer without the desktop app.
Sources#
Steps
- Ask the Bot for the job and when it should run.
- Open the Bot's Tasks and check When to run.
- Press Test to see a run now.
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. Don't contact customers. If the source data is unavailable, report the failure instead of using old data.