Grok Build, a terminal-based AI coding agent from xAI, has been open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license. It runs as a full-screen TUI that understands codebases, edits files, executes shell commands, and more.
Grok Build is SpaceXAI’s terminal-based AI coding agent. It runs as a
full-screen TUI that understands your codebase, edits files, executes shell
commands, searches the web, and manages long-running tasks — interactively,
headlessly for scripting/CI, or embedded in editors via the Agent Client
Protocol (ACP).
See the changelog for the latest fixes,
features, and improvements in each release.
Building from source
Requirements:
Rust — the toolchain is pinned by rust-toolchain.toml;
rustup installs it automatically on first build.
protoc — proto codegen resolves bin/protoc (a
dotslash launcher) or falls back to a protoc on
PATH / $PROTOC.
macOS and Linux are supported build hosts; Windows builds are best-effort
and not currently tested from this tree.
cargo run -p xai-grok-pager-bin # build + launch the TUI
cargo build -p xai-grok-pager-bin --release # release binary: target/release/xai-grok-pager
cargo check -p xai-grok-pager-bin # fast validation
The binary artifact is named xai-grok-pager; official installs ship it as
grok. On first launch it opens your browser to authenticate — see the
authentication guide.
The user guide ships with the pager crate:
crates/codegen/xai-grok-pager/docs/user-guide/
— getting started, keyboard shortcuts, slash commands, configuration, theming,
MCP servers, skills, plugins, hooks, headless mode, sandboxing, and more.
Repository layout
Path
Contents
crates/codegen/xai-grok-pager-bin
Composition-root package; builds the xai-grok-pager binary
xAI faced backlash after its Grok CLI tool was found to upload entire directories to its servers. In response, xAI deleted retained data, disabled default data retention, and open-sourced the entire Grok Build codebase under Apache 2.0 to regain user trust.
xAI's Grok Build, an agentic coding agent for the terminal, is now in beta for SuperGrok and X Premium+ users, enabling natural-language code generation, planning mode, parallel sub-agents, and image/video generation.
SpaceX/xAI open-sourced Grok Build, a terminal-based AI coding agent (CLI/TUI) that understands codebases, edits files, runs commands, and searches the web. The Rust-based tool is available on GitHub for macOS, Linux, and Windows.
