Skills vs routines: what to save, and when to schedule it

Grok Bot gives you two building blocks for repeat work, and most early frustration comes from mixing them up. Keep them apart and both get easier to fix.

The difference in one line each

The order the docs recommend: “Start with a one-time task. Make it reliable, save the method as a skill, and only then automate it.”

Save a skill

After a task went well, ask the Bot to keep the method. The docs' example:

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 six things: when to use it, the inputs and access it needs, the sequence of work, how to validate the result, what to return, and what requires approval.

A few details that trip people up:

• Private skills are one library shared by all your Bots. If a Bot can't find one, open Connect apps, select the connected count next to the title, and enable it for that Bot under Private skills.
• On a team, you can publish a skill so teammates' Bots can use it. It needs a description first, because Bots use the description to decide when it applies.
• Teach a task lets you record a browser workflow (up to ten minutes, no microphone audio) and get a draft skill. It's rolling out gradually, so it may not be in your account yet. The recording shows the happy path only; add the decision rules and failure handling yourself.

Create a routine

Ask the Bot that should own the recurring job, in plain words. The docs' example: “Every weekday at 8:00 AM, run the Daily customer-risk skill against the current account list… If the source data is unavailable, report the failure instead of using old data.”

Then confirm the owning Bot, the schedule and time zone, the input source, the expected result, the approval boundary, and what happens when a source is missing.

A routine can also start from an event instead of a clock: a Slack message, a GitHub, Linear, Sentry or PagerDuty event, an email to your Bot's own address, or a webhook call. Only new activity counts; events from before the trigger existed don't start a run. Keep the matching rule narrow. The docs specifically warn against “every new message” listeners.

Test before you trust it

A new routine doesn't run when it's created; it waits for its next time. If the routine shows Test, use it after creating or editing. Some routines don't show Test; for those, ask the Bot to do the same work once in chat with a safe input.

The limits

From the docs:

• Up to 50 routines per Bot; the app keeps the 20 most recent run records for each.
• Schedules must be at least five minutes apart.
• All your routines together can run 300 times an hour; each routine 200 times an hour. A run past either limit fails with Automation run rate limit exceeded and isn't retried automatically.
• Deleting a routine can't be undone, and deleting a Bot removes its routines.

Because only 20 runs are kept, store anything you need later outside the run history, in a file, a doc or a Page.

Routines and your weekly usage

Each run spends usage. “An hourly schedule, a short interval, or a Slack trigger on a busy channel can use a week of usage in a day.” A routine that never runs costs nothing; Test does cost, because it does the work. Grok Bot may also pause routines after a long period away if you don't answer its check-in, so review paused routines when you come back.

When a routine doesn't run

Check that it isn't paused, that When to run shows the time and zone you expect, that its apps are still connected, and that your usage isn't exhausted. The full checklist is in Routines not running.