How to build an AI chief of staff for your ecommerce business

I run mine on Grok Bot, an app for AI teammates: each bot gets a name, a job and its own computer in the cloud, and you work with it by messaging it. Shenron is my Chief of Staff, and his job is my morning brief. (Yes, he’s a Dragon Ball Z character. No, I haven’t grown up, and I don’t plan to.) Here’s how I set him up, the rules my bots work under, and what I changed after reading their results.

The steps work for a store, an agency or a SaaS team selling to ecommerce brands. Steps 1 to 4 work in any AI assistant. Steps 5 and 6 use Grok Bot’s routines, its word for a job that runs on a schedule.

The short version

1. Pick one recurring job you’re tired of doing yourself.
2. Name the sources it can use and what a good result includes.
3. Write down what it must ask you before doing.
4. Give it the first assignment and let it ask questions.
5. Run it once and check the result against the source.
6. Put it on a schedule, then decide what it takes on next.

What you need first

• A Grok Bot. It needs a paid plan: it comes with paid individual Cursor plans (Cursor Pro is $20 a month), Cursor Teams and SuperGrok ($30 a month). Cursor is best known for its code editor, and no, you won’t write any code here. Prices checked September 14, 2026.
• Never opened Grok Bot? Day 1 of my free five-day course walks you through installing your Chief of Staff, and Grok Bot’s own overview lists the desktop and phone apps.
• One place your work already lives that the bot can read, like a calendar, an inbox or a project board. Grok Bot has connectors for some apps, ready-made links you switch on, and works through its own computer for everything else.
• A job you already do by hand, so you can tell when its version is wrong.

How to build an AI chief of staff in six steps

1. Pick one recurring job

Start with a job, not a title. “Help me run the business” isn’t a job. “Every weekday morning, tell me what needs my attention today” is.

A good first job repeats, ends in something you can read, and can’t hurt anyone if it’s wrong. You can reread a bad brief. You can’t unsend a bad email.

Mine was Shenron’s morning brief. Yours might look like one of these:

• A store: today’s campaign launches and approvals, or yesterday’s orders and support tickets.
• An agency: client deadlines and sales calls, or a weekly rundown of each client account.
• A SaaS team: a summary and a follow-up draft after every sales call.

Done looks like: you can say the job in one sentence, including when it happens.

2. Name its sources and what a good result is

Tell it exactly where to look. Shenron reads my calendars, my email accounts and my Slack accounts. My other bots feed their updates to him too, so I read one brief instead of checking each bot.

Then describe the result before it exists. Mine has four parts:

• Today’s priorities
• Tasks waiting on me
• Decisions I need to make
• The meetings actually on my calendar

Skip this and you’ll get a neat summary of everything, which is just your inbox again with nicer formatting.

Done looks like: a named list of sources and a short list of what the result must include.

3. Decide what needs your yes

Write this down before the first run, not after something goes sideways. List every action it must not take without asking you.

Grok Bot’s own guide says to require approval for sending, purchasing, deleting, publishing and changing production systems. The routine prompt in my course boils that down to one line: don’t send messages to others or change records without my approval.

Reading and summarizing are the safe part. Acting is where mistakes cost you. My evening recap bot, Dende, reports on my Notion boards, but a recap doesn’t give him permission to rearrange them. Task changes still need my yes.

For a store, the list might be emailing customers, issuing refunds or discounts, and changing anything in Shopify.

Done looks like: one plain line per action, the way you’d say it to a new hire.

4. Give it the first assignment

Paste the whole assignment into the bot’s conversation. Tell it:

• who your business serves, and this week’s priority
• the job you want done
• the notes, files or accounts it may use
• what a useful result looks like
• what it must ask you before doing
• where to put the result, and when to check back

Those are the eight answers the course’s first-assignment worksheet asks for.

My free AI Chief of Staff Prompt Builder turns those eight answers into an assignment you can copy. It runs in your browser, and you don’t need to give it an email address.

End the assignment by asking it to explain its plan and ask about anything unclear. Its questions show you what you forgot to say, before it fills the gaps with guesses.

Done looks like: it replies with a plan and a few questions, not a finished brief.

5. Run it once and check it against the source

Ask for one run you can review before anything goes on a schedule. Grok Bot’s docs point out that a test run does real work, which is why step 3 comes first.

Check the result against where it came from:

• Did it read the right calendar, inbox or board?
• Are those real deadlines?
• Did “finished today” sneak in something from last week?
• If it couldn’t read a source, did it tell you, or did it treat missing information as a quiet day?

Read it where you’ll actually use it. We tried a table for Dende’s recap. It looked good on my iPad and my computer. On my phone? Not so much. So I changed his instructions: short messages, like texts. Short task titles. Due dates. Drop empty sections.

Give your bot the correction in plain words, have it update its instructions, and run it again.

Done looks like: a result you’d act on without redoing the work yourself.

6. Schedule it, then pick the next job

In Grok Bot, a routine decides when a workflow runs: on a schedule or, where it’s supported, after an event. You set one up by asking the bot in plain language. Give it the schedule and time zone, what it reads, the result you expect, what needs your approval, and what to do when a run fails. It creates the routine and shows you the next run.

Here’s the routine prompt from Day 3 of my email course. Paste it into your bot’s conversation and fill in the brackets:

Help me set up a recurring [morning brief / end-of-day recap].

Use [specific connected account, board, or source]. Focus on [the work I want covered].

Send it [days and time] in [timezone], here in this conversation.

Put decisions or work needing me first, with due dates and source links. Then summarize [today’s priorities and meetings / what changed today and what’s still open]. Use short messages I can scan on my phone. No tables.

If nothing needs attention, [send a short quiet-day update / stay quiet]. If you can’t read a source, tell me; don’t treat missing information as no activity.

Don’t send messages to others or change records without my approval.

Run it once for me to review before scheduling it. Ask about any missing setup details. After I approve the result, confirm the routine’s schedule, next run, and how I can pause it.

Decide what a quiet day gets. Shenron is told to send a brief anyway, because morning is for looking ahead. Dende gets the opposite rule: if nothing moved and nothing new is waiting on me, stay quiet.

Once it’s scheduled, open the conversation details and go to Routines. You can pause or edit it there, and Grok Bot keeps up to 20 run records for each routine. Background routines can run while your laptop is closed.

When the job holds up, choose one: keep it as is, widen it with one more source, or hand it back because checking it takes longer than doing it. Then pick the next job and start again at step 1.

Done looks like: a routine you’ve tested and a next run you can point to.

Common mistakes with an AI chief of staff

• You hired a title, not a job. “Marketing assistant” tells it nothing. Give it one job with a time attached.
• Don’t connect everything on day one. Start with the sources the first job needs, and add more once that job holds up.
• A schedule repeats whatever was wrong with the first run, for as long as it’s scheduled. Review before you schedule.
• Silence isn’t good news. Tell it to say when it can’t read a source, so a broken connection doesn’t pass for a quiet day.
• If you’ll read it on your phone, judge it on your phone. What looks fine on a laptop can be useless in your hand.
• A recap isn’t a green light. Summarizing a board and changing a board are different jobs, so say which one it has.
• Run history isn’t proof. Mine has shown a failed run, and a run that finishes can still miss a source. Read the brief itself now and then.

Worked example: Shenron’s brief and Dende’s recap

Here’s my setup in one place. Shenron is my chief of staff. Dende handles the evening.

AI chief of staff FAQ

Grok Bot details come from its overview and its guide to skills, routines and automations, read September 15, 2026. The setup details come from my own bots.