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Fixing missing skills after a Grok Bot template import

Published October 29, 2026 · Grok Bot changes often

You add a template, the preview showed several skills, and the new Bot has none. This is a known, tracked bug rather than something you did wrong.

What is happening

Since August 29, 2026 the official forum has tracked templates whose preview lists skills with their full text but whose imported Bot has an empty skill list. Instructions, memories, routines and plugin references arrive; skills do not. Staff confirmed it is not intended. It briefly worked around September 3, then broke again, and users were still reporting it on October 19.

It is easy to miss because the desktop details pane no longer shows a personal Bot's instructions, so nothing looks obviously wrong. The background is in Where did my Bot's instructions go on desktop?

Step 1: confirm what arrived

  • Type / in the composer to list the available skills, or
  • open Marketplace / Connect apps (Cmd+Shift+M), then your installed plugins and skills, then Private skills.

Compare the list with the template preview.

Step 2: recreate the skills

The preview's content field cannot be selected or copied, so the staff workaround is manual:

  1. Screenshot each skill in the preview, scrolling through long ones.
  2. Send the screenshots to the new Bot: "Create a skill named X with exactly this content."
  3. Read the result back. The Bot is working from images and can misread a line.

A setup prompt is the alternative: instead of importing, you ask a fresh Bot to create its own rules, skills and paused routines. Boterly has not tested its setup kits on a live Bot, so verify that every skill exists afterwards. Both routes are covered in How do I install a Grok Bot template?

Step 3: finish the setup the import never does

Whatever route you took, connect plugins yourself and run one small task before trusting a routine. If a plugin will not connect, see Plugins and MCP servers that will not connect.

If you publish templates

  • Ship the skill text next to the share link, in a README or as a setup prompt, so people can recover when import drops it.
  • Strip API keys, internal URLs and customer data first. A public link exposes the Bot's configuration. See How do I share a Grok Bot template?
  • Know which you are shipping: a template gives each person an independent copy, while a Team Bot shares one Bot. See Template or Team Bot?