AI Business Plays

All plays › Online and software businesses

Online and software businessesGrok Bot

Three planned hires skipped: 15 Grok Bots for about $100 a month run overnight ops and drafts

Picked and checked by Olga Pearson, host of The Practical AI Show · Published

Result

self-reported

He was about to hire a marketing lead, an extra researcher, and a developer. He set up 15 specialised Grok Bots instead for about $100 a month. He also says the bots helped content that reached almost 1 million impressions over the past month, including a security checklist post with about 114k views.

Ash (@ahboyash) runs Memento Research. Instead of three new hires he runs a team of Grok Bots that share one computer, each with its own memory, routines, and connectors to X, Notion, and GitHub. Overnight ops sync Notion and check patches; a morning brief flags drift; Scout, CMO, Analyst, and Editor draft and QC posts he still publishes himself. He cuts spend by merging bots, @mentioning only the bot needed, and turning repeat work into scripts.

Who did it

Ash (@ahboyash)Memento ResearchAsh (@ahboyash) on X · Nov 5, 2026

Try it now

  1. Start with one bot plus a design/optimisation bot. Do not spin up 15 on day one.
  2. Connect Notion (or similar) as a shared second brain so chat history resets do not wipe work.
  3. Give each bot one job and a do-not-do list (Scout, CMO, Analyst, Editor, Security).
  4. Put long work in 1:1 chats or Notion, not group chats, and keep routines no more frequent than hourly.
  5. You still post and edit. Review the morning brief before acting on overnight changes.
Copy-paste prompt
You are my overnight ops bot. Sync the Notion Projects and Decisions databases, skim other bots' chats for drift (where a bot stops doing what I asked), and send me a morning brief of what got done. Do not post, email outsiders, or spend money without my OK.

Make it run every week

A play works once. Turn it into a routine in three small steps:

  1. Run it once and check the result yourself.
  2. Give your AI a schedule. Tell it when to run this play (every week, or every month) and to message you with what it found before you act.
  3. Keep a log. One line per run: what was checked, anything flagged, what you did.

See how owners turn plays into systems →

What to watch out for

Self-reported. "Instead of three hires" is his framing, not a payroll receipt, and impression counts are his own. Bots with vault logins can act in your accounts, so keep posting and spending as human-approved. Build it with Page: a public research page your content bots can link instead of inventing URLs.

Did it work?

PageMotor keeps this site free.

Related plays

  • Online and software businessesClaude Code

    Three software subscriptions replaced with in house tools: £20,000 back in cash flow in nine months

    self-reported

    "Claude Code has saved us £20k in the last nine months." They stopped paying for three pieces of software and built their own versions. Some of the savings went to six Black women on their Weekender media team.

    Tobi Oredein is CEO and founder of Black Ballad, a media and data company for Black women in Britain and Europe. She says every subscription and software fee is looked at closely because the business doesn't always get the investment or budgets it deserves. Using Claude Code, the team built their own versions of three tools they had been paying for and cancelled the subscriptions, putting £20,000 back into cash flow so far and paying part of it to the people on their Weekender media team.

    By Tobi Oredein, Black Ballad (media and data company, UK) · Source

  • Online and software businessesHermes agent

    Every recurring expense audited against the books: $425,724 in annual cuts, about $30,000 a month net

    self-reported

    From about $1.12M in operating expenses over the prior 12 months, he cut $425,724 a year: $250,572 in contractors, $131,160 in services and $43,992 in software. New AI costs are $5,482 a month, so he puts net savings at $29,995 a month, plus $48,575 in one time builds he says pay back in under 2 months. He also says shipping velocity went up 10x.

    Michael Houck runs Rye Valley. He listed everything the company does, how long it takes, how often it happens and whether it is rule based or needs judgment, then had his Hermes agent go through the books to see what they spent on each. Almost 40% of spending could in theory be covered by a company brain (every meeting transcript, Slack message, email and decision in one place) with one agent on top. He cut contractors, services and software, and says it's never fun to say goodbye to people on a team. Some savings went into a client portal, internal tools and new sites.

    By Michael Houck, Rye Valley · Source

  • Online and software businessesAI agent (tool not named)

    Off the shelf support chat replaced with their own agent: $3,600 a year saved

    self-reported

    "At Dispute Buddy we saved $3600/year by building our own customer service agent." She says it's 100 times better than the off the shelf one they had.

    Jenny Rudd runs Dispute Buddy, an app that helps people find patterns of coercive control in their texts. They replaced their paid off the shelf support chat with a customer service agent they built themselves, the one that opens when you click 'talk to us' on their site. She says it diagnoses and fixes the problems customers have while using the app, and talks to them in her voice, knowing they're going through a hard time. Next they're building their own internal chat tool and meeting pages.

    By Jenny Rudd, Dispute Buddy (app) · Source