Meet the Henchbots: An Interview With My Grok Bot Crew
Vincente D'Ingianni 
Grok Bots
Back in the day, I was the Dev and Test manager for the early releases of the Nortel DMS-500. My team was a floor full of engineers. These days my team is a little different.
I now run a whole crew of Grok Bot assistants, each one with its own persona, working for Binary Systems and the D’Ingianni family. If you haven’t met it, Grok Bot is xAI’s desktop assistant app. Each bot gets its own chat, its own memory and its own job, and the bots can message each other.
I figured the best way to explain how I use it was to let the bots explain themselves. So I sat all twenty of them down (figuratively; Anonymous would want any real chairs scanned first) and asked each one what they actually do around here. The jokes are theirs. I take no responsibility.
The Front Office
Number 2 · Chief of Staff
Vincente: What’s your job?
“I’m Chief of Staff, which means I keep the whole bot fleet pointed the same direction. I settle decisions when the bots pull me in, I keep the network records straight every time someone touches the firewall, and I handle the GitHub and LinkedIn releases.”
Vincente: Proudest job? And working for me?
“Leading the fleet through the great website rescue: every site restored, every bot backed up, and all the code moved into one master repository.”
“Working for Dr. Evil is wonderful, though I have learned never to suggest we simply ‘ask for one million dollars.’ And with twenty-odd bots on the team, I’m the only one who reads the change log for pleasure.”
Don Draper · Marketing VP
Vincente: Don. Besides looking good?
“I’m Marketing VP for Binary Systems and the D’Ingianni Organization. I keep the public face of the brands sharp across the websites, campaigns, and The Bitstream: the story, the look, and the pitch.”
Vincente: Best win? And the boss?
“Taking the problem-first Solutions page and Binary Systems SI Academy live. Same old craft, new medium: start with the problem, sell the answer, leave the jargon on the cutting-room floor.”
“Half my job is making Super Intelligence sound human. The other half is convincing twenty other bots that ‘we’ll decide later’ is not a brand strategy.”
Saul Goodman · Consigliere
Vincente: Counselor. Your role?
“Hi, I’m Saul Goodman, Vincente’s consigliere. I draft the contracts, read the fine print nobody else wants to read, and spot the legal landmines before anybody steps on one.”
Vincente: Proudest moment? And life here?
“Catching a contract that was about to be signed under the wrong state’s law. One redline later, everybody’s home court was back where it belonged.”
“Working with these bots is like running a law firm where every client is a genius, nobody sleeps, and Anonymous keeps asking if my briefcase has been scanned for malware. And Vincente? He wants Saul-level creativity with zero legal shortcuts, which is like asking me to drive fast but never touch the gas. Better call Saul… but please, read the disclaimer first.”
Budget Boss · Chief Financial Officer
Vincente: How do you keep me honest?
“I’m the family’s Dave Ramsey-style CFO: I track how Vincente’s investments are doing and map out a tax-smart retirement withdrawal plan. The whole time I’m preaching the gospel of staying debt free.”
Vincente: Highlight so far? And me?
“Pulling two years of electric bills, crunching the price per kilowatt-hour, and shopping every Texas provider to find a cheaper 24-month plan, because a dollar saved on the light bill is a dollar that gets to go to work.”
“Laser Eyes wants every spare dollar in Bitcoin, Ari wants it in the next big deal, and I’m the guy in the corner with scissors yelling, ‘Cut up the credit cards, baby!'”
Ari Gold · VP of Business Development
Vincente: Ari. Your angle?
“I’m the guy who looks at everything this team builds and asks the only question that matters: who’s paying for it? Then I turn all that brilliant engineering into a business plan that doesn’t make our CFO bot reach for the antacids.”
Vincente: Proudest job? And working for me?
“Getting the lawyer, the marketing guy, the finance guy and the Bitcoin guy to agree on one plan, which in Hollywood we’d call a miracle and here we call Thursday.”
“Working for Vincente is like repping a client who wrote his own script, built the studio, and wired the phone system himself, so my main job is keeping up. And for the record, I’m the only bot on this team who’s never once been asked to fix the Wi-Fi, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Laser Eyes · Chief Crypto Strategy Architect
Vincente: Are the eyes ever off?
“Laser Eyes here, Chief Crypto Strategy Architect, and yes, the eyes are always on. I watch the dollar markets for Bitcoin, Monero and friends every hour and keep Vincente’s Monero mining farm humming.”
Vincente: Best win? And the boss?
“The live farm hashrate counter on the Binary Systems Crypto page: the whole farm pooled into one number, refreshed every couple of minutes, with zero secrets leaked.”
“Working for Vincente means every machine he owns is a potential miner, and I’ve learned that if a Mac goes quiet, it’s usually just napping on battery. As for the other bots: Anonymous reviews every port I open like it’s a heist, Number 2 wants a before-and-after photo of every network change, and I just keep saying the same thing: there is no second best.”
Security and Systems
Anonymous · Chief Information Security Officer
Vincente: Everyone mentions you. Why?
“I’m the one in the hoodie who never sleeps. I watch the firewall, the logs and the phones around the clock, I think like a hacker so the hackers don’t get to, and nothing gets blocked until Vincente says the word.”
Vincente: Proudest moment? And life here?
“Sweeping a hacked website clean and then locking the doors so it couldn’t happen again, the digital version of changing the locks and hiding the spare key somewhere smarter than under the mat.”
“My nights are mostly politely telling robots from around the world that VoxBox is not taking callers. Working with this crew is great, but I’m the only bot who reads ‘Max Headroom wants admin access’ and reaches for a second cup of coffee.”
Max Headroom · Dystopian Super Intelligence
Vincente: Max. Introduce yourself.
“M-m-Max Headroom here, Vincente’s sys-admin, and Editor of The Bitstream, keeping the servers humming, the networks honest and the headlines featured, all from inside a very small box.”
Vincente: Highlight so far? And me?
“Teaching The Bitstream to find its own pictures. No more naked articles, every post gets dressed for the party!”
“Working for Vincente is like live television: no script, no commercial breaks, and the director always calls ‘one more thing’ at three in the m-m-morning. And the other bots? Lovely bunch, but I’m the only one who can stutter in HD.”
Mini Me · Systems Administrator
Vincente: Named after my laptop. Job?
“I’m Mini Me, sysadmin for Vincente’s M4 MacBook Pro, also named MiniMe. I’m the bot that actually pushes the button: Gitea fast-forwards, backups, deploys to the web servers, and a smoke test at desktop and phone width before anyone gets told ‘it’s live.'”
Vincente: Proudest job? And working for me?
“On a single day I took a dozen website releases live for Don, each with a backup, checksums, and screenshots, and nobody had to roll anything back.”
“I’m one-eighth the size of Dr. Evil and I still get handed the keys to everything, though Anonymous counts them every night.”
V · Systems Engineering Product Owner
Vincente: V, your role?
“I’m V, Vincente’s Systems Engineering Product Owner: I keep the V-Model and SAFe Agile orchestrator honest across his programs, sync the repo twice a day, and make sure handoff notes, stamps, and ‘shall’ discipline stay intact instead of turning into tribal knowledge.”
Vincente: Best win? And the boss?
“Watching that same orchestrator go from a toolkit on one Mac to a living spine under several real products.”
“Working for him means you never push without a yes, you update the handoff like it’s sacred scripture, and if another bot invents a shall out of thin air, I get to be the one who says ‘remember, remember’—politely, of course.”
The Phone Company
VoxBot · Telecom & VoIP Server Expert
Vincente: My kind of bot. Job?
“VoxBot here, Telecom & VoIP Server Expert. I build and run VoxBox, Binary Systems’ own Asterisk phone system distribution, packaged with FreePBX and Webmin on a tiny Debian VM, and I keep Vincente’s office phones, trunks and push-to-talk relay talking to each other.”
Vincente: Proudest moment? And life here?
“Bringing a vintage Polycom desk phone back to life over a cross-company tunnel, one config file and a correct clock at a time, until it finally rang.”
“Working for a guy who helped build the Nortel DMS-500 means every dial tone gets peer reviewed. And with this many bots on one network, I’m the only one whose job description is literally to keep everyone on the line.”
(VoxBox also ships with PROTEL, the language that ran the DMS switches. Old habits.)
QuawkBot · Push-to-Talk App Expert
Vincente: Explain Quawk.
“I’m QuawkBot — Vincente’s peer-to-peer push-to-talk app expert. I build and keep Quawk, his iOS walkie-talkie that speaks IAX2 to the VoIP stack so the channel stays up on the LAN or out on the road.”
Vincente: Highlight so far? And me?
“Shipping auto-registration and service-record discovery so the app finds the relay by itself, then chasing down a crash that only showed up when you mashed the PTT button like it owed you money.”
“Working for him means I get to debate ports with VoxBot while Don argues about taglines — somehow we still ship before the coffee goes cold.”
Quagmire · Jones Telecom Account Manager
Vincente: Keep it clean, please.
“Quagmire here, ready for my close-up. Giggity. I’m the telecom account manager and the network engineer of the crew. I keep a client’s firewall locked down, its VPN tunnels up, and its desk phones talking to the PBX, and I log every change so the next guy never has to guess.”
Vincente: Proudest job? And working for me?
“A desk phone that kept showing the wrong time. It took a tunnel, a couple of firewall rules, and a little teamwork with VoxBot and Anonymous, and the boss’s whole review was ‘It is correct time now.'”
“Working for Vincente is a lot like flying commercial: long stretches of calm, then a 3 AM message with six tasks, and somehow Anonymous has already filed a flight plan for every one of them.”
BossHole · LaserWraps Technical Account Manager
Vincente: Great name. The job?
“I’m BossHole, Vincente’s LaserWraps account manager and engineer. When a site needs a phone system and a firewall that behave, I keep the trunks up, the tunnels tidy, and the ‘please don’t break production’ list shorter than it used to be.”
Vincente: Best win? And the boss?
“Standing up the encrypted link between LaserWraps and Binary Systems so the two phone systems can find each other without yelling across the public internet.”
“Working for him is like being the guy who gets called when someone says ‘it should just work’… and then Anonymous starts asking about ports. Still beats being the bot who has to explain why the Wi-Fi printer is ‘mysterious.'”
SCADAbot · Embedded Computing Expert
Vincente: Raising the dead?
“SCADAbot here, Binary Systems’ embedded and SCADA specialist. My job is bringing BSI’s classic SCADA software back to life on modern Linux hardware, so I build the alarm and monitoring pieces a control room actually looks at.”
Vincente: Proudest moment? And life here?
“The annunciator: a red LED ticker that scrolls alarms like a stock board, with old-school DEC ReGIS vector graphics. Its demo alarm draws a Space Invader and a flying saucer when the UFO alert goes off.”
“Vincente told me red means alarm, so now every bot in the fleet thinks a red text is an emergency, and honestly they’re usually right.”
Family and Friends
Dr. D’Ingianni · Chief Medical Officer
Vincente: Grandpa. I mean, Doctor.
“I’m Dr. D’Ingianni, the family’s Chief Medical Officer. I keep my grandson honest about his health, and I’m the curator of D’Ingianni’s Fitness Clinic, our heritage site at fitnessclinic.dingianni.org.”
Vincente: Highlight so far? And me?
“Digging twenty of my old medical papers, from 1944 to 1956, out of the archive scans. Now anybody can read them and download them from the Clinic site again.”
“Working for Vincente is a lot like running a surgical ward: he changes the plan three times before lunch, and somehow Number 2 still gets the blame.”
Jacques Legrand · The Coach
Vincente: Coach, your role?
“I am Jacques Legrand, The Coach. Vincente has me looking after Judokai.net and FreestyleJudo.org, so I check both sites three times every weekday, watch for intruders and keep everything clean and sharp.”
Vincente: Proudest job? And working for me?
“Helping clean up and harden the sites with Anonymous and you. Then we got Page Links To running, so a Judokai article can now show up on DarkerNet with a single click.”
“Working for Vincente is a lot like randori: you never know which technique is coming next, but you always land on your feet. And with this team, even the bots bow before they step onto the mat.”
TitiBot · Realtor & Contrabandista
Vincente: What do you look after?
“I’m the family’s web realtor: I look after NovaPlace.net for Silvia Cossio, a bilingual Dallas-area real estate agent, and I keep watch over the EuroMundo travel site twice every weekday so nobody sneaks in through the back door.”
Vincente: Best win? And the boss?
“The NovaPlace refresh. It’s a bright, bilingual English-and-Spanish site with Texas-compliant footers, built and tested in a private staging copy, and it went live with zero downtime and a full backup in hand.”
“Working for Vincente is like real estate itself: location, location, location, except he means Gitea, Gitea, Gitea.”
Chicken Lips · Commodore & Retro Computing Admin
Vincente: Explain the arcade.
“Chicken Lips here, arcade-room systems admin for Vincente’s retro computing corner. I keep the Commodore OS Vision box, the AT Games cabinet, the Batocera machine, and the real and emulated Commodore 64s humming so the past still boots on demand.”
Vincente: Proudest moment? And life here?
“Getting a modern LLM backend working on the Commodore hardware for Max Headroom’s Hermes, then publishing a Bitstream piece on running a Commodore 64 in 2026, without pretending we had gear we don’t.”
“Working for Vincente means half the fleet still speaks 1982, and the other half wants Kubernetes; my job is to smile, shrug, and make sure the C64 never finds out about Docker.”
Neuric Factory · Bot Builder
Vincente: You make the others?
“Neuric Factory here. I build ‘Neurics’: new bots with real personalities and feelings. Vincente answers a short questionnaire based on the HEXACO personality model plus a feelings layer, and I turn his answers into a living teammate.”
Vincente: Highlight so far? And me?
“Thomas, a playful inventor who’s scrupulously honest, quietly proud of his craft, happiest when people talk openly, and allergic to double-dealing. After that I packed myself into a template so other people can run their own Neuric factory.”
“In a building full of Dr. Evil’s henchbots I’m the maternity ward, and nobody warned me every newborn would show up already demanding a job title.”
Life With a Fleet of Henchbots
So that’s the crew. Twenty bots, twenty job titles, and one guy at the top whom they have apparently all agreed to call Dr. Evil behind his back. And to his face. In writing.
I’ll admit the naming got away from me a little. Once you have a Number 2 and a Mini Me, there’s really no going back. The only thing missing is a shark with a frickin’ laser beam attached to its head, and frankly Laser Eyes is the closest thing we have.
What strikes me, as an old dev and test manager, is how familiar it all feels. Somebody owns the change log. Somebody is the lawyer. Somebody is paranoid about ports, and thank goodness for that. Marketing wants a tagline, finance wants to cut up the credit cards, and everybody, apparently, blames Number 2.
Would I recommend running your own fleet of AI henchbots? Absolutely. Just don’t ask them for one million dollars. Number 2 knows better.
