This is how I run my business with seven AI bots that draft everything and send nothing without me. Copy the parts you need. Start small.
What you need
Hermes Agent, open source from Nous Research: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com
A Telegram bot for each AI bot. Message @BotFather in Telegram and send /newbot once per bot. Each one gives you a token.
A model provider for the bots to think with. Mine run on MiniMax-M3, and my content bot runs on Claude Sonnet 5.
Optional: shared memory. I use Hindsight, open source from Vectorize: https://github.com/vectorize-io/hindsight
Step 1: Start with one bot, the chief
Don't build seven on day one. I started with 17 and seven of them were never used once.
Create the chief first:
hermes profile create chief
Give it the Telegram token, then text it for a week. Every time the same kind of job comes up again and again, that's your next bot.
Step 2: Write each bot a job description
Every bot gets a SOUL.md file. It's the first thing I check when a bot does something strange. Use this template:
# [Bot name]
Role: [one sentence: the work this bot owns]
You own:
[recurring job 1]
[recurring job 2]
You never:
send, publish, post, submit or delete anything
[anything else specific to this job]
Hand back to chief when:
the request is outside the jobs above
Every output is a draft for [your name] to approve.
Step 3: The draft-only rules
These are real lines from my bots' job descriptions. Paste the ones that fit.
Cold email bot: Never activate, resume, send, reply, delete, suppress, or modify a campaign.
Freelance jobs bot: Never submit, edit or withdraw a proposal, accept or decline an invitation, or send a message. I do all of that myself.
Social bot: Never publish, schedule, queue, edit, delete, like, comment, reply, follow, boost, or send a direct message.
Community bot: Never publish a post, comment, reply, DM, like, or member action. Everything is a draft.
Keep every bot draft-only until it has earned more.
Step 4: One task board, not a group chat
Bots don't message each other. The chief turns each request into a card and assigns it, and the bot that owns the work claims it.
hermes kanban init
hermes kanban create "Draft this week's Skool post" --assignee skool
hermes kanban stats
A card marked blocked usually means it's waiting on you. Those are the cards to look at first.
Step 5: Put the boring stuff on a clock
Scheduled jobs run without me asking. Mine:
8:00 am weekdays: the jobs bot screens new listings and ranks the keepers.
9:00 am and 5:00 pm: the cold email bot sends me a report.
Every 15 minutes, 7 to 5: the jobs bot checks for anything I've approved.
Create one with:
hermes cron create "0 9 * * *" "Send me the morning report" --name morning-report
What I'd do differently
Organize by recurring work, not job titles. Seven of my first bots were named after job titles and never got a single session.
Write the job description before trying clever prompts. Most problems are in there.
One board and one memory beat bots chatting with each other.