I kept asking what the colored shapes in the Grok Bot sidebar meant. I wanted a taxonomy. Triangle for strategy. Hexagon for quality. That is not what they are.
They are faces. Each desk gets a unique colored geometric shape so I can tell one row from another. Triangle, hexagon, rectangle, circle, cloud, three dots. Default avatars. Not a role code.
Red, pink, and orange on the shape are still just the face. Official docs do not map those colors to error, warning, department, or priority. Pink is not an error. Orange is not urgent. Status is a different layer: unread, needs attention, working or typing.
If I want a different face, I change it on that agent. Open the agent name in the chat header, or press Cmd+Shift+I / View conversation details, then Agent settings (the gear). Or Bot actions → Edit Profile. The fields are name, title, description, avatar, and notifications.
The motion and the badges are the status. Officially there are three attention states: needs attention (a question, an approval, a handoff), unread activity (a new result), and working or typing.
Opening a conversation marks the current activity as read. The Bot menu can mark a conversation read or unread by hand. Even when notifications are suppressed while the app is focused, the sidebar badge and the dock badge still show unread.
On my list, this is what I see. A blue mark on the right of a row is unread. When the icon starts moving — bouncing dots — that desk is working. A small green corner mark sits on live desks. Official docs do not name that color, so I am not going to write “green means online” as if it were product doctrine. It is what I see on a live row.
Two desks can wear almost the same name. I have “Dennis’ Executive Assistant” and “Dennis Executive Assistant.” Different avatars. Different chats. The three-dots face is one of them. The moving dots on any row mean that desk is working, not that the three-dots face is special.
Pin keeps a Bot at the top. Hide from sidebar does not delete it and does not pause routines. Right-click → Delete is permanent. Agent and transcript gone.
The purple-pink Grok icon on my iPhone Home Screen is xAI Grok chat. It is not Grok Bot. Grok Bot is a separate Home Screen shortcut / PWA. Tap the wrong one and you open the wrong product.
The playbook is How I Use Grok Bot. Official pages I keep open: settings and notifications, create and manage Bots, and get started.
The older 70-tab version of this idea is still here: How I run 20+ AI agents.