Grok Bot guides

Three things turn an idea into a working bot. A spec that says what the job is and how to do it. The connections it needs, such as a mailbox, a repo or a calendar. And a trigger: you asking, or a schedule.

Build it against real work, not a demo. A bot that only ever saw tidy example data falls over on the first real inbox, and buyers notice within a day.

On BOTMARKET the spec text is what changes hands, so it has to stand on its own in someone else's account. The ones that sell tend to share five habits.

• One job, named in the first line. "Scan the watchlist and post one summary before open" beats "a helpful market assistant".
• Explicit limits. Say what the bot must not do. Never send, never spend, never delete, never invent a quote.
• A fixed output shape. Describe the format you expect, and give one short example of it.
• A rule for missing information. Say whether it asks, skips or guesses. Silence here is where bots embarrass their owners.
• Draft, then wait. Nearly every bot in the official catalog that touches other people promises a human yes before anything is sent. Put that in writing.

A spec travels with the template. An API key pasted into it is a key you have published to every buyer, and rotating it later does not un-publish it.

Name the integration and let each buyer connect their own account. Our submission check refuses the obvious cases, but it is a safety net, not a reviewer: a key it does not recognise still ships if you put it there.

If you have already shared a spec containing a key, treat that key as burned and rotate it at the source before listing anything.

Past a certain point, one bot that does everything is worse than three that each do one thing. Narrow bots are easier to describe, easier to trust, and easier to sell, because a buyer can tell in one line whether it solves their problem.

Chaining them is a workflow question rather than a Grok question: one bot's output becomes the next one's input, and you stay the approver in the middle.

Review here is quick when a submission arrives complete.

• A live share link from x.ai, checked today.
• The full spec text, not an excerpt. Buyers can only use what you paste.
• Setup notes for anything the buyer must connect themselves.
• A tagline someone can act on, and a category that matches it.
• A price, or free. Paid listings wait on your payout account being verified.

Every listing keeps both halves, the link and the spec, which is why a dead link on x.ai does not take a purchase down with it. The about page covers how that protection works.

These are written and published by xAI, not by us. They cover the product itself, where the advice above is about selling a template of it.

The full index lives at x.ai/bot/guides. The official bot catalog is worth a look before you build: what is in it.