1 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:10,880 Last time we dug into a nasty surprise. 2 00:00:11,080 --> 00:00:15,760 A bot triggers a Cursor cloud agent, and somebody's quota quietly drains. 3 00:00:15,880 --> 00:00:21,920 The advice was one bot, one job, one machine, plus hard spending caps. 4 00:00:22,064 --> 00:00:24,640 This week there's a real payoff to that story. 5 00:00:24,789 --> 00:00:30,960 SpaceXAI announced Team Bots on September 28, and the headline is who pays. 6 00:00:31,107 --> 00:00:35,840 Quick note first: this episode is brought to you by Jellypod AI, 7 00:00:35,880 --> 00:00:39,840 the easiest platform to create AI podcasts and generative videos. 8 00:00:40,160 --> 00:00:41,520 A word on sources. 9 00:00:41,700 --> 00:00:47,680 The community changelog at getgrokbot.com tracks releases through August 31, 10 00:00:47,700 --> 00:00:51,920 and a Cursor support engineer said on the forum that there's no official changelog 11 00:00:51,947 --> 00:00:52,480 right now. 12 00:00:52,660 --> 00:00:56,000 The best place to check is the Grok Bot account on X. 13 00:00:56,187 --> 00:01:01,920 So for this week, I'm leaning on SpaceXAI's Team Bots announcement and its docs, 14 00:01:01,947 --> 00:01:03,760 which were updated September 29. 15 00:01:03,980 --> 00:01:09,360 Per our research, Team Bots is in public beta on Cursor Teams and Enterprise plans. 16 00:01:09,522 --> 00:01:11,634 Here's the problem it solves. 17 00:01:11,714 --> 00:01:14,274 Until now, sharing a bot meant a template link. 18 00:01:14,364 --> 00:01:18,594 Someone opens it, adds a copy, and that copy belongs to them. 19 00:01:18,794 --> 00:01:21,954 The docs are clear that it doesn't hand over your computer, 20 00:01:21,986 --> 00:01:24,434 your logins, or your conversation history. 21 00:01:24,578 --> 00:01:27,394 That's safe, but the copies drift apart. 22 00:01:27,466 --> 00:01:32,034 Different memories, different tools, no single bot your team can point to as the 23 00:01:32,082 --> 00:01:32,674 real one. 24 00:01:33,035 --> 00:01:34,555 A Team Bot flips that. 25 00:01:34,795 --> 00:01:37,195 It's one Bot your whole team talks to. 26 00:01:37,355 --> 00:01:41,435 The owner sets it up once, with the plugins, secrets, skills, 27 00:01:41,475 --> 00:01:44,475 and files it needs, then publishes it to the team. 28 00:01:44,635 --> 00:01:49,275 Teammates chat with it in the Grok Bot app or in Slack, and when the owner changes 29 00:01:49,315 --> 00:01:51,915 something, the change reaches everyone. 30 00:01:52,060 --> 00:01:55,140 Now the privacy model, because it's easy to get wrong. 31 00:01:55,287 --> 00:01:58,100 Every teammate gets their own chat. 32 00:01:58,120 --> 00:02:01,620 The owner can't read teammates' chats, and teammates can't read the owner's. 33 00:02:01,820 --> 00:02:04,540 But the Bot keeps two kinds of memory. 34 00:02:04,660 --> 00:02:08,820 It holds private notes with each person, and it holds a shared team memory that 35 00:02:08,860 --> 00:02:10,340 every conversation reads. 36 00:02:10,540 --> 00:02:14,900 Per the research, the Bot saves something to team memory when someone tells it the 37 00:02:14,927 --> 00:02:16,020 whole team should know it. 38 00:02:16,260 --> 00:02:19,380 So if you want the Bot to remember something for everybody, 39 00:02:19,440 --> 00:02:20,500 say so out loud. 40 00:02:20,500 --> 00:02:22,580 And now the part that answers last episode. 41 00:02:22,780 --> 00:02:27,620 The docs say that when a teammate chats with a Team Bot, the usage counts against 42 00:02:27,652 --> 00:02:31,060 that teammate's own Grok Bot allowance, not the owner's. 43 00:02:31,172 --> 00:02:35,140 That holds in the desktop app, the mobile app, and Slack. 44 00:02:35,228 --> 00:02:39,700 According to the research brief, scheduled routines bill to whoever created the 45 00:02:39,760 --> 00:02:40,260 routine. 46 00:02:40,527 --> 00:02:45,140 If a teammate runs out of weekly usage, the Bot tells them in the chat or the Slack 47 00:02:45,186 --> 00:02:47,460 thread instead of quietly tapping the owner. 48 00:02:47,640 --> 00:02:52,420 The one exception: messages that can't be attributed to a person, 49 00:02:52,452 --> 00:02:56,180 like an automated Slack workflow trigger, fall back to the owner's pool. 50 00:02:56,535 --> 00:02:58,415 So what changes for you? 51 00:02:58,562 --> 00:03:02,455 If you were afraid to share a bot because every question would hit your quota, 52 00:03:02,487 --> 00:03:04,375 that fear has a concrete answer now. 53 00:03:04,615 --> 00:03:08,295 It's not a replacement for spending caps on automated triggers, 54 00:03:08,335 --> 00:03:11,175 since those unattributed messages still land on the owner. 55 00:03:11,355 --> 00:03:15,575 But for people asking questions, the cost follows the person asking. 56 00:03:15,820 --> 00:03:18,196 Next, Slack. 57 00:03:18,416 --> 00:03:23,116 A published Team Bot can have its own Slack app, with its own name and avatar, 58 00:03:23,169 --> 00:03:25,996 so it posts as itself instead of as a generic app. 59 00:03:26,263 --> 00:03:30,716 It answers direct messages, responds when you mention it in a channel, 60 00:03:30,736 --> 00:03:33,996 and follows threaded replies without needing a fresh mention each time. 61 00:03:34,256 --> 00:03:39,356 One requirement: teammates link their Slack account to Cursor under Settings, 62 00:03:39,446 --> 00:03:41,196 General, Team Bots. 63 00:03:41,543 --> 00:03:45,756 Unlinked users get a Link Account prompt, which is what keeps outsiders from 64 00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:47,276 spending your company's compute. 65 00:03:47,449 --> 00:03:49,862 Where does the work actually run? 66 00:03:49,982 --> 00:03:52,502 Per the brief, it depends on the context. 67 00:03:52,662 --> 00:03:56,022 The owner's chat in the app runs on the owner's cloud computer. 68 00:03:56,342 --> 00:04:01,222 A teammate's app chat, or their one on one Slack DM, runs on that teammate's 69 00:04:01,275 --> 00:04:02,222 computer. 70 00:04:02,296 --> 00:04:07,462 Shared Slack channels, group DMs, and threads run on a dedicated cloud computer for 71 00:04:07,494 --> 00:04:10,662 that Team Bot, separate from everyone's personal ones. 72 00:04:10,875 --> 00:04:14,102 So a file you drop in your private chat stays on your machine, 73 00:04:14,222 --> 00:04:18,022 and a file shared in a channel lives on the Bot's channel computer. 74 00:04:18,154 --> 00:04:23,302 Remember that earlier docs warned not to use separate Bots as a security boundary on 75 00:04:23,334 --> 00:04:24,422 your personal computer. 76 00:04:24,614 --> 00:04:27,622 Team Bots draw a different line. 77 00:04:27,625 --> 00:04:29,305 Secrets are handled centrally too. 78 00:04:29,585 --> 00:04:34,585 A Team Bot supports up to 25 encrypted secrets, referenced by variable name, 79 00:04:34,605 --> 00:04:40,105 and values show up as REDACTED in terminal output, logs, and plugin responses. 80 00:04:40,249 --> 00:04:41,705 Teammates can't see them. 81 00:04:41,918 --> 00:04:47,225 If your Bot builds a custom MCP server, a Cursor support reply on October 1 says 82 00:04:47,285 --> 00:04:51,625 hosting it at a URL is the most reliable way to share it, because a local command 83 00:04:51,665 --> 00:04:54,665 depends on files that only exist on the creator's computer. 84 00:04:54,825 --> 00:04:59,705 And if the Bot needs a teammate's personal connector, like Linear or Google Drive, 85 00:04:59,732 --> 00:05:03,865 it posts a card asking: allow once, always allow for this Bot, 86 00:05:03,956 --> 00:05:06,825 always allow for all Team Bots, or skip. 87 00:05:06,997 --> 00:05:09,397 SpaceXAI shared a few examples. 88 00:05:09,523 --> 00:05:14,837 Harper, a small business insurance company, built a customer recovery Team Bot in 24 89 00:05:14,904 --> 00:05:20,037 hours to reconcile lapsed policies across three internal platforms and draft 90 00:05:20,099 --> 00:05:20,677 outreach. 91 00:05:20,784 --> 00:05:26,437 Their CEO, Dakotah Rice, reported it recovered over $120,000 for hundreds of 92 00:05:26,506 --> 00:05:27,477 policyholders. 93 00:05:27,603 --> 00:05:32,277 Inside SpaceXAI, an engineering bot in Slack connected to Notion, 94 00:05:32,368 --> 00:05:37,877 Linear, Datadog, and Cursor helped a five person team coordinate hundreds of Cursor 95 00:05:37,930 --> 00:05:42,837 Cloud Agents, with over 100 verified pull requests a day during the launch push. 96 00:05:42,957 --> 00:05:46,357 Those are company reported numbers, not independent ones. 97 00:05:46,528 --> 00:05:47,588 One model note. 98 00:05:47,728 --> 00:05:54,388 Grok 4.7 hit the API on September 21, with a 500k context window and reasoning 99 00:05:54,434 --> 00:05:56,548 effort from low to xhigh. 100 00:05:56,908 --> 00:06:00,708 A faster variant is available only in Cursor and Grok Build, 101 00:06:00,868 --> 00:06:04,388 at 2x the standard token rates, billed through your plan. 102 00:06:04,588 --> 00:06:09,188 But the Grok Bot docs say Cursor manages model selection and there's no model 103 00:06:09,245 --> 00:06:12,628 picker, so I can't tell you which model is behind your Bot today. 104 00:06:12,808 --> 00:06:17,548 The last confirmed model change in the changelog is Grok 4.6, 105 00:06:17,588 --> 00:06:18,548 on August 12. 106 00:06:18,773 --> 00:06:21,920 If you want to use this, pick one shared job. 107 00:06:22,010 --> 00:06:26,720 Metrics questions, triage in a Slack channel, or an internal helpdesk. 108 00:06:26,760 --> 00:06:31,920 Set it up once, put secrets in the encrypted list, host custom tools at a URL, 109 00:06:31,940 --> 00:06:33,760 and tell it what the whole team should remember. 110 00:06:33,920 --> 00:06:38,320 Keep a personal Bot for your everyday work, and keep approvals on anything that 111 00:06:38,360 --> 00:06:39,360 sends or deletes.