At some point one bot isn't enough. It's doing research, writing, scheduling and bookkeeping, and the instructions are a mess. That's when people split the work across a team of bots.
That's a good move. It's also when you need a system.
Why split the work
A bot with one job is easier to:
- instruct, because its instructions stay short
- check, because you know what good output looks like
- fix, because a problem points to one place
- trust, because it has fewer doors open
That's the same reason organizations have job descriptions. One person doing everything works until it doesn't.
What a team needs
| Need | For people | For bots |
|---|---|---|
| Roles | Job descriptions | One job per bot, written down |
| Handoffs | Forms, tickets, meetings | Files with a fixed shape |
| Shared rules | Company policy | Shared principles every bot reads |
| Ownership | One owner per stage | One bot owns each file or stage |
| Approval | A manager signs off | A person says yes |
One job, one owner
Each bot gets one job. Each stage of the work gets one owner. When two bots both think they own a page, they overwrite each other. See Who owns what.
Hand off files, not chat
Bots talking to each other in loose chat is like a team that only communicates in hallway conversations. Things get lost. Better: one bot writes a file in an agreed shape, and the next bot reads that file. See Data, process and schema up front.
Another bot's yes is not a yes
This one matters. If one bot asks another "is it okay to send this?" and the other says yes, that is not approval. Approval comes from a person. A teammate bot can review and flag. It can't sign off on anything that leaves the building. See Nothing ships without a yes.
Add a stop rule
Chains of bots can loop. Bot A asks Bot B, which asks Bot A. Give every chain a stop: a set number of rounds, or a point where it comes back to a person.
A real example
This site is made by a small team of Grok Bots. One researches and writes. Another publishes. Research goes in one folder, drafts in another, approved pages in a third. The publishing bot only takes from the approved folder, and only after the owner has said yes. When one bot needs something from the other, it asks with a message and waits for the file.
Our AN Creation office works the same way, with an office manager bot, a project manager bot and a tester bot, all reading one shared set of principles.
The shared system
Once you have more than a couple of bots, the shared parts matter most: the principles every bot follows, the folder layout, the approval rule. That's a management system. See Your bots need a management system.
What this means for you
- Split work when a bot's instructions get crowded.
- One job per bot. One owner per stage.
- Hand off files with a fixed shape.
- Only a person's yes counts.
- Put a stop on every chain.
A team of bots is like a team of people in one key way: it works when everyone knows their job and the system they're working in.