Work
Make your weekly usage last: copy-to-bot prompts for the biggest drains
You send few messages, yet your usage is gone in two or three days.
What hurt
铁柱AGI (@cgnot996) wrote a beginner guide (in Chinese) of 12 usage-saving moves, each with a sentence you paste straight to your bot. It starts from how usage is charged: by the work the bot does, and every turn rereads the whole conversation. Not affiliated with xAI.
What to install or create
Cut the biggest costs first: send screenshots, video frames and scans to a CLI tool on the cloud computer and let the bot read only the text summary. Keep the chat short by moving rules into the description and long material into files. Slow routines and make them silent on no change. For data watching, let a cheap script check and wake the bot by webhook only when something moved. Avoid big group chats.
Bots
Any busy bot
Applies the saving rules to its own work and routines.
Plugins
None on day one. Follow the first-run steps.
Routines
None on the first run. Watch one manual pass first.
The prompt
Move 1: send images, video and scans to a CLI (author-quoted, translated from Chinese)
Quoted from @cgnot996 — as published. Do not invent a second system prompt.
(Translated from the author's Chinese.) From now on, for tasks like viewing screenshots, analyzing video frames, frame-by-frame review, audio transcription or reading long scanned documents, don't read the multimodal files yourself. Prefer calling Grok Build on the cloud computer to read them and output a text summary, and only read its text conclusions. If you can't call a command-line tool right now, remind me to get a text summary on the web first and send it to you.
Move 3: slow routines, silent on no change (author-quoted, translated from Chinese)
Quoted from @cgnot996 — as published. Do not invent a second system prompt.
(Translated from the author's Chinese.) List all your scheduled routines. Tell me how often each runs, how many times a week in total, and whether it messages me even when nothing changed. Then tell me which one costs the most usage and help me slow its interval; also change the rule: if a check finds no substantive change, stay silent and don't write a report.
Move 4: wake only on change (author-quoted, translated from Chinese)
Quoted from @cgnot996 — as published. Do not invent a second system prompt.
(Translated from the author's Chinese.) For data-monitoring routines, don't set fixed-time polling wake-ups in the routine. Let's set up a lightweight check script in the background on the cloud computer and keep you asleep; only when the script detects a substantive change in the target data does it wake you via the webhook URL to follow up.
First run
- 1Read https://x.com/cgnot996/status/2108504325609984233 (credit @cgnot996).
- 2Paste Move 3 first: get every routine's weekly run count and make no-change runs silent.
- 3Paste Move 1 so images, video and scans become text summaries before the bot reads them.
- 4For data-watching routines, use Move 4: a background script checks, and a webhook wakes the bot only on change.
- 5Move standing rules into the bot's description and long logs into files, and avoid big group chats.
Approval fence
These prompts change how your bot works; ask it to show proposed routine changes before applying them. Pay-as-you-go burns fast, so decide before turning it on.
What to tweak
The bot rereads everything every turn, so shrink what it reads and how often it wakes.
Source
铁柱AGI @cgnot996 · Original post
Not affiliated with xAI. We did not write this prompt. Third-party template terms still apply.
Pro pack
Routine cost control: stop running out of usage by Wednesday
A one-hour audit, a quiet Usage officer and a fix playbook (cadence, silence, event triggers, fresh chats, scripts over clicks) that cut waste without losing the jobs your bots do.