Creating a Bot
Walk through the fields on a bot and what each one is for.
Overview
A bot is the top-level container in BotHound. It holds the soul, its tasks, and any schedules that run the bot on its own. Creating a bot is quick; the real thought goes into the soul and the tasks you add afterward.
Fields
Name
A short label for the bot. The name shows up in your bot list, in run history, and on scheduled run notifications. Pick something you will recognise at a glance, for example “Daily AI Briefing” or “Weekly Competitor Prices”.
Soul
The soul is the system-level instruction that sits above every task the bot runs. It is where you establish who the bot is, what it is for, and any rules that apply to everything it does.
The soul should cover four things:
- Persona. Who is the bot? “You are a research assistant…”
- Scope. What is the bot for? “…who produces daily briefings on the AI industry…”
- Audience. Who is the output for? “…for a product team at a B2B SaaS company…”
- Rules. What should it always or never do? “Be factual. Skip marketing language. Cite a source URL for every claim.”
You do not have to get this perfect on the first try. The soul is editable, and you will often rewrite it once you see the bot’s first few runs.
For a deeper guide, see Writing an Effective Soul.
After you create the bot
Once the bot exists, you build it out in three places:
- Tasks. Add tasks that break the work into stages. See Bot Tasks.
- Tools. Attach tools to the tasks that need them. See Tools Overview.
- Schedule. Set up one-off or recurring runs so the bot keeps working without you. See Schedules.
You can edit any of this later. The bot page is the canvas where you iterate until the output is what you want.