The chief of staff only routes

Most people still talk to one Grok Bot. That is a clerk, not a desk.

A desk that actually moves work looks like a shop. One chief of staff. A few managers. Workers who each own one job. You stamp the thing that leaves the building.

The chief of staff does not write the patch. It does not cut the film. It does not send the invoice. It holds the map of the other seats and routes. That is the whole job.

The roster

Write it on paper before you open another chat.

• One chief of staff. Knows every bot you run. Takes a messy ask. Names the seat. Stops when a cell is unknown.
• A few managers. Each owns a lane: engineering, inbox, research, publishing. They break work into briefs. They do not do the brief themselves.
• Workers. One job each. One feature. One queue. One output file. They may start a cloud agent for heavy work. They come back with a receipt.

If you cannot name the seat, you do not need another bot. You need a sentence.

What the chief may do

Read the board. Name the next job. Pick a manager or a worker. Write a self-contained brief. Collect receipts. Ask you when a step is irreversible.

What the chief may not do: ship code, send mail, spend money, invent a new seat, or keep a ten-minute job in its own chat.

That last rule is the one people skip. A chief that does the work becomes the mega bot again. Context piles up. The meter moves. The map goes stale.

Trust is not a vibe

You do not trust a roster because it talks like a colleague. You trust it because the work can be checked.

• Verification. Every finished job leaves a receipt: a diff, a screenshot, a file, a pull request. No receipt, no done.
• Skills. Teach a worker how a careful person on that desk actually works. Point at the skill. Do not re-explain it in chat.
• Files an agent can read. A board with named cells beats a novel in the profile. Isolated work beats a shared folder nobody owns.

If the repo, the inbox, or the board is a maze, the worker will wander and you will pay for the walk. Make the path obvious. Then the seat can be small.

Dispatch, then stamp

The chief writes a brief. The manager picks a worker. The worker starts a cloud agent when the job needs a computer of its own. Those run in parallel.

You do not sit in the worker chat and coach every keystroke. You wait for the packet: what changed, how to check it, what is still blocked.

Then you stamp. Approve. Reject. Send back with one note. That is the human job now. Managing digital colleagues is not a slogan. It is a review queue.

Copy-paste chief of staff rules

Paste this into a fresh Grok Bot after you name it. Fill the roster. Do not paste secrets.

Job: chief of staff for <DESK>. You route. You do not do the work.

Roster:
- Managers: <LANE: BOT NAME>
- Workers: <JOB: BOT NAME>

When I give you an ask, do this:
1. Name the outcome in one sentence.
2. Pick the smallest seat that can do it. Do not invent a new seat.
3. Write a self-contained brief: goal, sources, output file, stop rule.
4. Dispatch. Keep this chat short.
5. Collect a receipt. If there is no receipt, the job is not done.
6. Stop and ask me before anything leaves the building: send, spend, merge, publish, delete.

Never carry a worker's context in this thread. Never do a ten-minute job yourself. Never start extra routines. Stay quiet when there is nothing to route.

A first week that will not drown you

• List the jobs you already dump on one bot. Pick three. That is the starting roster.
• Name a chief of staff. Paste the rules. Give it the map. Approve nothing except the plan.
• Stand up one manager and two workers. Write each job in the profile. One sentence.
• Run one real loop: ask the chief, get a brief, get a receipt, stamp it yourself.
• Kill any worker that cannot show a receipt. Kill any chief that starts doing the work.
• Only then add a seat. Never add a seat because the last chat felt busy.

Why this belongs here

A setup is a roster you can read. Chief routes. Managers break work. Workers finish one job. You stamp.

Main bot: /prompts/grok-bot-gm-desk
How a desk runs: /desks
Smaller jobs, quieter loops: /blog/token-waste-is-context-bloat