ai group chat with a job for everyone

choose who answers before the first brief

the Who answers setting changes how the room speaks. pick it for the kind of work you want, rather than leaving every bot to comment on everything.

give the room an ending

a group of bots agreeing with each other is not much of a result. decide what you want to leave with: a revised paragraph, a short list of open questions, or a plan that names the decisions still yours.

make a bot for each distinct job through New bot, then bring them into a group thread. each keeps its own ai and permissions. you can speak to one with an @mention, and bots can use mentions to hand work to each other.

keep the room small. the docs recommend three focused bots rather than eight. if you cannot explain why a bot is in the room, leave it out for now.¹ the difference between an agent and a chatbot matters less here than whether each participant has useful work to do.

room one: a writing desk

use a writer and an editor, with Who answers set to Only when mentioned. this room is for shaping text you bring to it, not publishing on your behalf.

put this in the group instructions: "work from the brief i provide. the writer proposes wording; the editor checks clarity and support. label suggestions that need a source. do not publish or change files."

start with: "@writer, shorten this introduction for a reader who has never heard of the product. keep the claims from my brief. @editor, wait until i ask for your review." then ask the editor to inspect the proposed wording against the original.

you control the handoff because style decisions often need a human choice between versions. pin the agreed brief at the top so the current constraints are easy to find. the room can pin one thing, so use it for the brief rather than a running collection of drafts.

room two: a decision workshop

make a planner and a questioner. choose Everyone responds when you want their separate reactions to one bounded choice. give both the same attachment and ask them to work from it.

group instructions: "the planner lays out options using the supplied material. the questioner names missing information and assumptions. neither should make the decision for me. keep each response to the part you were assigned."

try: "we are choosing between the two workshop outlines in this document. planner: compare what each asks of the audience. questioner: find what we would need to know before choosing. do not invent attendance or cost estimates."

read both contributions before asking for another round. if replies start repeating, change to Only when mentioned and call on the bot whose input you need. two confident answers are not independent evidence; check their reasoning against the attachment.

room three: a project handoff

use a coordinator, a drafter and a checker. set Who answers to Leader and choose the coordinator as the lead. this room suits a task whose pieces need to come back together.

group instructions: "the coordinator assigns a narrow task to each bot with an @mention. the drafter makes a handoff note from the files i supply. the checker compares it with those files. the coordinator brings me unresolved questions. ask me before you change anything."

first message: "prepare a handoff for the next person editing this report. identify the current draft, the supporting material and the unanswered questions. do not guess who owns a task. ask me where ownership is missing."

the lead hands out work; it does not acquire the other bots' permissions. for ongoing coordination with scheduled briefs, see the chief of staff setup.

shared instructions are different from memory

group instructions apply to every bot in the room. memory remains a separate choice for each one. bots do not learn from group chats unless you enable Learn from group chats for that bot.²

turn that on deliberately when a room contains decisions worth keeping. leave it off when the conversation is a temporary exercise. do not assume that a useful correction in a group has become a lasting note for every participant.

if a preference should apply everywhere, About me in Settings holds things such as your time zone and how you like to be written to. use the group instructions for this room's task, rather than repeating your whole profile.

give each participant only the access it needs

a checker working from attached files may not need connected apps at all. if another bot needs an app, allow that bot specifically. each app can be off, read only, or read and write, with an exact action list available too.

sending has its own approval setting. do not infer that changing a label or editing an app page will ask first. keep those bots read only, or include "ask me before you change anything" in their instructions.

keep human ownership visible as well. one person should decide whether the final handoff is usable. the ai teammates guide goes further on fitting a bot room into a small team's work.