Solo creative studio (~20 bots)

Anonymized case study from patterns at Studio Harrison (Joel Harrison). No client names or private contact details.

What happened

A one-person creative studio peaked at about twenty AI helpers, then settled on twelve core roles after measuring noise, review time, and tool cost.

Bots they kept

Front Door, Inbox Triage, Money, Invoices, Travel and Calendar, Research, Quality Control, Design, Video, Tech, People, and Focus Coach, same starter set as this template.

Bots they retired (why)

Second Research Bot: duplicate work; merged playbooks into one Research bot.
Old Coordinator: replaced by a simpler Front Door with clear house rules.
Sleep Finder + Calendar-only: merged into Travel and Calendar.
Two disk auditors: polled storage too often; owner runs a monthly check instead.
Pattern Watcher: interesting reports, little time saved.
Call Coach: low weekly use; owner preferred live prep.
Always-on News Watcher: hourly polling burned budget; switched to a daily digest.
Social Auto-Poster: paused until draft-only workflow was trusted.

Sample day (Front Door only)

Messages were tagged RESULT, BLOCKER, or QUESTION, never play-by-play updates.

7:30 RESULT: Inbox: 2 need you, 5 drafts ready, 12 newsletters summarized.
8:00 RESULT: Travel: door-to-door table (train favored); nothing booked.
10:15 QUESTION: Invoices: OK to use standard payment terms on a draft?
11:00 BLOCKER: Tech: calendar connector needs re-auth.
3:00 RESULT: Focus Coach: new idea ranked below current priority 2; park until Friday.

Approval exceptions

Anything under the owner’s name → draft, owner sends.
Bot’s own inbox/number for its job → may send, must not impersonate the owner.
Money, payroll, legal, deletions → owner always.
Travel booking → owner approves each purchase; holds and quotes are fine.

Lessons learned

One front door for the owner.
Draft by default for the owner’s voice.
Retire bots that do not earn their keep within ~30 days.
Avoid frequent polling, batch on a schedule.
Merge overlapping roles (travel + calendar + late-night hotels).
Count your review time as cost.

Full write-up in the repo: bot-team-in-a-box/examples/solo-creative-studio-twenty-bots.md

← Bot team hub