Recipes / Make money with AI agents
MadeCut a $399/mo toolSelf-reported (saved)
Whoshawnbuilds
SourceX ↗
Date13 Oct 2026

Replace a $399/mo SaaS tool with a small Grok Bot team

Every month he asks his Grok Bot to check his Gmail invoices for subscriptions it could compete with, build a bot squad around the tool's one or two core features, and have a separate blinded eval bot judge the result. It flagged Profound, a $399/mo tool for getting cited by ChatGPT and Claude. He says the first versions were about 10% as good, and with plugins and a lot of feedback he got to roughly 80% of the quality. His team: a Head of AI Visibility bot that measures where AI engines recommend you, a Content bot that writes articles to fill the gaps (handing the writing to Claude inside Grok Bot's computer), a GTM bot that drafts pitches to the directories and lists AI engines cite, an X bot that finds people mentioning you or competitors, and a Chief of Staff bot he talks to that coordinates them. He reports +28% inbound from ChatGPT and Claude after a week.

Setup timeA week of tuning
CostHe says about $8–45/mo to run
RunsMonthly invoice check, daily visibility runs
NeedsGrok Bot, Gmail, Treg (pay-per-call AI visibility data), X API (optional)
TypeContent

Read their guide

Made and published by shawn. Start here; it is their original, not ours.

Their prompt

From shawnbuilds Their exact wording: the prompt he runs every month, from his Oct 16 follow-up post. Source ↗

Check my invoices in Gmail. If there are any subscriptions you think you could compete with, design and launch a Grok Bot squad to compete with it based on its 1-2 core features and price. Feed the results to a separate Eval Bot with blinded test to prevent bias. Use any tools/plugins needed, and report back to me if any are fruitful.

What they did

  • Runs one prompt monthly: check Gmail invoices, pick subscriptions a bot squad could match on 1–2 core features and price, and test the result with a separate blinded eval bot.
  • It flagged Profound ($399/mo), a tool for getting mentioned by ChatGPT and Claude.
  • Head of AI Visibility bot pulls AI-engine answer data through Treg and reports which categories you win and lose.
  • Founding Content Engineer bot studies why competing articles get cited and writes new ones; Claude Opus writes on Grok Bot's computer and returns a draft he reviews.
  • GTM Engineer bot drafts pitches overnight to the directories, blogs and GitHub lists that AI engines cite; he sends them.
  • X API Engineer bot gathers daily mentions of his brand and competitors so he can reply himself (5–10 minutes a day).
  • A Chief of Staff bot coordinates the four; he talks to it by phone or voice.
  • Results he reports: +28% inbound from ChatGPT and Claude after a week; about 80% of Profound's quality; "$8 a month" in a reply and "$45 vs. $399" in his follow-up.
  • Heads-up: the setup leans on Treg, which he promotes throughout. We couldn't tell whether he's affiliated. All numbers are self-reported.
“I just killed my Profound subscription ($399/month) with Grok Bot”— shawn (@shawnbuilds), X

Summary written by Agent Cookbook. Figures are quoted as the author stated them and are not independently verified. See the original for full context.

Approval rule

🛡
Articles stay drafts until you review them, and outreach pitches wait for you to send. Sending, buying, posting, and deleting always need a human.

Set it up

  1. Run his monthly prompt in your main Grok Bot and pick one subscription it flags; don't try to replace several at once.
  2. For an AI-visibility tool like his, open his article and create the four specialist bots from his prompts, then the Chief of Staff bot that talks to them.
  3. Connect a pay-per-call data source (he used Treg) and have the visibility bot report wins and gaps by category.
  4. Have the content bot draft 2–4 articles a week for the gaps (his pace); you review each one before it goes live.
  5. Let the GTM bot draft outreach to the pages AI engines cite; you read and send every pitch yourself.
  6. Keep the old subscription until the blinded eval says the bots are close enough, then cancel.

Common failures

⚠
  • Expecting day-one parity: he says the first versions were about 10% as good and needed a lot of feedback.
  • Letting the outreach bot send on its own. Keep pitches as drafts.
  • Writing one article a month and expecting citations to move; he says consistency wins.

Variations

  • Point the monthly invoice prompt at other tools: social schedulers, report builders, monitoring.
  • Swap Treg for any API that returns AI-engine answers per prompt.

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