Bot recipes
Add a ready-made team of bots, with their roles, skills, and group chats, in one click. Find, preview, import, and switch on a recipe, or share your own team as one.
A recipe is a ready-made team for a job: several bots with their roles, playbooks, skills, and group chats, already set up to work together. It's the fastest way to get something useful running without setting up each bot yourself.
There are 45 recipes in the recipe library, for example:
- Run a Calm Inbox
- Ship Code Safely
- Validate Your Startup Idea
- Inbox Crew, one of the five crews
You need Machine Desktop 0.1.38 or later.
Add a recipe
Find one
Two places to look:
- On the web: browse the recipe library.
- In the app: click + at the top of the sidebar and choose Recipes. On the Explore tab, browse Machine recipes or type in Search recipes. Recipes on the web opens the library in your browser.
Open it in Machine Desktop
On the web, click Add to Machine Desktop on the recipe's page. Your browser asks to open Machine Desktop: allow it. The recipe opens in the app.
In the app, click Load next to a recipe.
Review the preview
The preview shows:
- each bot in the team and what it does,
- Included skills, which start off, and
- what will happen when you add it.
Nothing has been added yet.
Add the team
Click Add team. Machine creates each bot as a new project, groups them in a new team in your sidebar, and sets up their group chats. A message confirms how many bots were added.
Your existing bots and chats are never changed. If anything goes wrong while adding a team, nothing is added, so you never end up with half a team.
After you add a recipe: switch it on
To keep you in control, a new team starts partly switched off. Work through this list:
| What | Starts as | To switch it on |
|---|---|---|
| Skills | Off | Open each bot's settings → Skills, and turn on the ones you want. See Skills and memory. |
| Routines | Paused | Open Tools → Automations, check each routine, and Resume it. See Manage automations. |
| Apps | Not connected | Open Tools → Connected apps and connect what the recipe needs. See Connected apps. |
Then open the team's group chat and say hello. The bots know their roles.
Crews: teams with standing responsibilities
Five recipes are crews: teams built around jobs the bots look after without being asked. Each bot comes with its goals already written in, so they show on the Responsibilities board as soon as you add the crew.
| Crew | Bots | What they look after |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox Crew | Keeper, Writer | Keeping your inbox under control, flagging what's urgent, and a draft ready for every reply you owe. |
| Research Crew | Scout, Analyst | Watching your competitors and the topics you follow, and a short brief each week. |
| Ops Crew | Planner, Tracker | Preparing your day from your calendar, catching clashes, and chasing stuck tasks. |
| Founder Crew | Chief, Numbers, Voice | A morning brief, investor and customer follow-ups, revenue and churn, and posts in your voice. |
| Small Business Crew | Desk, Books | Customer emails, sending invoices and chasing late payments, and a weekly view of money in and out. |
Each goal has its own check-in routine, named after it, like Check-in: Keep my inbox under 20 unread. A check-in runs on a schedule, looks at what changed, and reports in a few short lines. Like every recipe routine, check-ins start paused: resume the ones you want in Tools → Automations.
Crew bots only draft. Nothing is sent, posted, published, bought, or deleted until you approve that exact action.
Import a recipe from a file or link
A recipe is a file, so you can use one someone sends you. Two kinds work:
- a
.mdrecipe, like the ones in the library, and - a
.recipe.jsonfile, made with Share as a recipe.
- Click + at the top of the sidebar and choose Recipes.
- Open the Import tab.
- Either:
- Bring your own recipe: drop the file onto the box, or click Choose a recipe file.
- Load from a link: paste a link to a Machine recipe page, or to a
public
.mdfile on GitHub.
- Review the preview and click Add team.
The file picker also lets you choose other .json files, such as backups
from the self-hosted app. Machine can't add those: you see the preview, but
clicking the button shows an error and nothing is added.
Share your own team
Turn a team in your sidebar into a recipe file that anyone can add with Recipes → Import.
- Right-click the team's heading in the sidebar, or click its ⋯.
- Choose Share as a recipe.
- A file named after the team, ending in
.recipe.json, is saved to your downloads. Send it to whoever you like.
| Included | Not included |
|---|---|
| Each bot's name, title, description, and Soul | Conversations and threads |
| Each bot's color and mascot look | Files and anything on the bots' computers |
| The team's group chats, with their members and group instructions | Secrets and connected apps |
| Your name, as the person who made it | Archived bots in the team |
A shared recipe holds up to 12 bots and 6 group chats. The option only appears for a team that has bots or group chats in it, and the team needs at least one bot to share.
Share a recipe from the library
Each recipe on the web has:
- Download .md: save the recipe file to share or keep.
- Copy for another agent: copy the recipe text to use elsewhere.
Common questions
Do recipes cost anything? Adding a recipe is free. The bots cost the same as any other bots when they work.
Can I change a recipe's bots after adding them? Yes. They're normal bots. Change their Soul, settings, and group chats however you like.
Can I add the same recipe twice? Yes. You get a second, separate team.
Can I undo adding a recipe? Archive or remove the bots it added. See Archive or remove.