Grok Bot: From 0 to 1 — Once It’s Installed, Here’s Everything You Need to Know

The Grok Bot tutorial I wrote on September 10th is now nearly half obsolete.

Back then, connecting to X was such a big deal that I dedicated a huge portion of the guide to applying for a developer account, creating projects, and setting up Apps. None of those steps are needed anymore.

Over the past month-plus, I’ve published 49 Grok Bot posts on X. Before writing this piece, I went back and checked everything I’d published before, and found five major changes: the way you connect to X has changed, reading data, writing drafts, and reading DMs no longer consume X’s API quota, the X connector can do more, the $30 tier now includes Grok Bot, and the mobile app is fully connected.

There are also time-limited perks — like MLH giving away Cursor Pro on October 11th — that have long since expired. Following the old posts step by step can easily leave you with nothing to show for it.

But a lower barrier to entry doesn’t mean you automatically know what to do once it’s installed.

On day one, you just ask it to check the weather and read the news, and it’s no different from regular Grok. A few days later, when you want it to actually do real work, you start piling on prompts yourself, and they get longer and longer. After a while, stale memories and outdated rules can even start working against it.

So this time I’m not going to dump another feature list on you. Instead, I’ll walk you through the full journey — from activation, to connecting X, to using a ready-made template, all the way to cleaning up memory — using a Bot I built to help me run my X account as a running example.

Bottom line: when you’re just getting started with Grok Bot, three things are enough.

• Day one: Connect to X and have it run a single read-only command to pull your three most recent posts, then go verify the results on X yourself;

• Week one: Don’t rush to write prompts from scratch. Pick a ready-made Bot from the template marketplace and let it complete a real task for you;

• Every two weeks after that: Give it a memory deep clean — remove outdated rules and content it no longer needs.

I’ve also included advanced topics like backups, quota management, and writing code. Read those sections as needed.

A note on timing: The features, quotas, and limits in this article are based on the official pages and my own usage as of October 29, 2026. Grok Bot updates fast — when you actually do this, always defer to the official pages.

What’s Inside

01 | Before You Start

Chapter 1 explains what Grok Bot is, how to activate it, and five common terms in plain English, followed by a checklist of what you should be able to do by the end.

02 | The First Two Things

Chapter 2 covers connecting to X and getting a read-only task working. Chapter 3 is about where to find ready-made Bots and who to learn from. Once you finish these two chapters, your Bot can already work for you.

03 | Daily Use

Chapter 4 covers four everyday scenarios: running X, a mobile assistant, email and passwords, and images and video. Chapter 5 is about writing code — skip it if you don’t code.

04 | Keeping It Stable and Long-Lasting

Chapter 6 is the third thing — the memory deep clean — plus backups, quota management, and managing multiple Bots.

05 | My Setup, Common Pitfalls, and a Quick Reference

Chapter 7 covers how I personally use it today, Chapter 8 collects the common pitfalls, and a final table is there for you to bookmark.

Chapter 1: Before You Start — Grok Bot Explained in Five Minutes

1. It’s Not About Asking Questions — It’s About Delegating Tasks

Regular Grok is geared toward conversation, search, and generation. Once it answers your question, that’s the end of it.

Grok Bot comes with a cloud computer that runs continuously. You hand it a job, and it keeps going — opening browsers, using the terminal, calling plugins — and comes back with actual results. You can close the conversation, and the task keeps running.

So the mindset has to shift: don’t think of it as something you ask questions of — think of it as something you hand tasks to.

2. Why Grok Bot

I’ve used all the major Personal Agents: Meta’s Muse, Grok Bot, OpenAI’s Dots, and Manus’s Cue. Here’s how I rank them:

So why is Grok Bot still my daily driver? For me, it comes down to two things: first, it can seamlessly search content on X, which is essential for running and analyzing an account; second, I can hand off ninety percent of my work from my phone without opening a computer. On top of that, Cursor covers the coding side, and since the vendor maintains it, I don’t have to worry about upkeep.

If you have the energy to maintain things yourself, you can also self-host Hermes Agent or OpenClaw. That’s what I used to do — and I’ll explain in Chapter 7 why I stopped.

3. How to Activate

• Just want to try it: Subscribing to the $30 tier is enough. The $8 Lite plan does not include Grok Bot. Prices vary by region — compare before you buy, and defer to the official pricing page.

• Already subscribed to X Premium+: X subscriptions have now been consolidated, so you can link X Premium+ directly to Grok Bot without any additional purchase.

• Want to try it for free: New Grok users can sign up through an invite link and get a 2-week free trial of Premium. Three things to note: starting the trial requires a credit card; mainland China is not eligible; and per official rules, once the person you invited converts to a paid plan, the inviter gets a one-time quota reset. The rules on this may change at any time — defer to the redemption page.

Redemption link: https://grok.com/refer/bot?code=AG64AQHP2S2M

4. Five Terms, Explained in Plain English

When you first open Grok Bot, a handful of terms will confuse you. Here’s how to tell them apart in plain English:

5. Three Quirks of the Cloud Computer

This cloud computer has three quirks worth remembering up front: it goes to sleep when nobody’s using it, it can get reset, and all Bots share a single machine.

So important data needs to be stored outside of it. And anything that needs to run on a schedule should go through its built-in routines. I explain the reasons in detail in Chapter 6, Section 4.

6. What Model Powers It

The official word doesn’t specify which model is behind it. It’s a black box that routes automatically based on the task: it might route to Claude’s models, or it might route to Grok’s own.

Plenty of people have used model fingerprinting tools to test this — I have too. But the results only reflect that one request. Change the task or the time, and the routing could be different. So don’t obsess over what’s under the hood — just look at how well it does the work.

7. What You Should Be Able to Do After Reading

• Activate Grok Bot, connect to X, and use a read-only command to pull back correct data;
• Know where to find ready-made Bots, and know how to check what permissions a Bot needs before installing it;
• Perform a memory deep clean, and know where to back up important data;
• When your quota drains fast, know which places to check first.

Chapter 2: The First Thing — Connect to X and Get a Read-Only Task Working

1. Why Start with a Read-Only Task

In the beginning, you don’t need to build a whole Bot team. Get one Bot through a real task first — that’s when problems surface. This article starts with a Bot that runs your X account, and every chapter that follows continues with that same Bot.

When connecting an external service for the first time, start with read-only tasks. Searching posts, reading timelines, and viewing account profiles are all good for testing. Posting, deleting, following, and anything that costs money — wait until the connection is stable.

One more thing: a plugin card that says “Installed” or an interface that shows “Connected” doesn’t mean anything. When I connected to X for the first time in September, the plugin was installed, but the Bot still couldn’t read my account. Only a Bot that can actually enter the real tool and bring back correct results is truly usable.

2. Connect to X in Three Steps

Chapters 4 through 6 of my September article walked through opening an X Developer Account, creating a Default Project, and setting up an App inside the project. All of that can be skipped now. The latest X connector doesn’t require a developer account — just log in with your X account inside Grok Bot and authorize.

• Create a Bot: Give it a clear name and role, e.g., “X Operations Assistant — reads data, finds topics, and compiles reviews”;
• Authorize X: Open Connected Apps in the sidebar, 1 type “X” in the search box, 2 open X under “Plugins,” and log in with your X account to authorize;
• Run the acceptance command: See the next section.

After authorizing, open the X plugin: 1 under the Account section it should show “Connected”; 2 under the Tools section you can see how many tools are enabled — in my case, all 99 are on.

“X’s quota” here refers to X’s API quota on their end — completely separate from Grok Bot’s own weekly quota. Now the only thing that uses X’s API quota is publishing posts. Once connected, none of the following cost anything:

• Reading your own account’s timeline, mentions, likes, bookmarks, and follows;
• Searching posts, trends, and news across the platform;
• Reading DMs and summarizing unread messages;
• Managing Lists;
• Drafting X articles (saved as drafts only — nothing gets posted);
• Scheduling calls and booking live streams.

One more update from my September article: it taught readers how to hook up Cloudflare WARP on the cloud computer to change the exit IP. If the default exit works fine, there’s no reason to change it just to change it — fewer network modifications mean a more stable cloud computer.

3. A Copy-Paste Acceptance Command

Once connected to X, give it this:

Read-only access to my X account. Do not post, delete, follow, or modify anything. Return the account name, the publication timestamps, links, and current engagement metrics of my three most recent original posts. If any post references other content, list the quoting relationships separately. Before executing, tell me which capabilities you will call. If the expected cost is high, pause and ask me first.

After getting the results, open the latest post on X yourself and verify the links, timestamps, and engagement numbers. Once everything checks out, then let it do longer searches and automated organization.

The first time I ran this command, it didn’t just pull the post I’d published at 10 PM that day with its engagement numbers — it followed the quoting chain to find my post from the day before, and then asked if I wanted a daily account report. That’s when I realized this thing could actually do real work.

At this point, your Bot can read real X data. Next step: don’t rush to write your own prompts. First, see what others have already built.

Chapter 3: The Second Thing — Use What Exists, Don’t Start from Scratch

1. Why Start with Something Existing

I started by writing prompts from scratch too. They got longer and messier over time. Then I went digging and found that the official case library already had 56 use cases organized, and community sites had hundreds more templates shared by other people. Whatever you want it to do, someone has probably already done it.

Starting by modifying someone else’s template is much faster than writing from scratch — and it’s an easier way to see what a good prompt looks like.

2. Where to Look: 5 Sites

Start with the official template marketplace, then search community sites for similar things, and finally see how others write their prompts:

• Official Template Marketplace (x.ai/bot/marketplace): Start here;
• Grok Bot Index (grokbotindex.com): Claims to have 487 templates;
• Grokdex (grokdex.net): Community leaderboard — see what everyone’s using;
• AI Agents Grok Bot Hub (aiagents.org/grok-bots): Lists 273 Bots and 19 plugins;
• awesome-grok-bot on GitHub: A collection of prompts and configurations.

In the official template marketplace, 1 “From Grok Bot Team” shows templates published by the official team — a good place for beginners to start; 2 the search box lets you search by author or Bot name.

3. Who to Follow: 5 Accounts

To keep up with new features, these 5 accounts are enough:

• Official @bot: New features get announced here first — voice calls, plugins, shopping and payment updates;
• Matt Palmer @mattyp: Member of the Grok Bot team, wrote the Grok Bot 101 beginner’s guide, and posts a weekly roundup of new features;
• Lauren @poteto: Builds Grok Bot with Grok Bot — her workflow is the most inspiring to watch;
• Roshan Sadanani @roshan_s: Focuses mainly on shopping and payments;
• @SpaceXSI: Posts major announcements and livestreams.

4. The One I Use Most of the Official Recommended 5

The official case library covers basically all my Grok Bot use cases. The one I use the most: turning my X following list into a personal CRM.

The setup is simple. In Connected Apps in the sidebar, search for Notion, 1 open Notion under “Plugins,” and log in to connect your account.

Then just tell it once, and it will organize the people you follow — along with their articles and content — into Notion. All eight or nine hundred people I follow are now in a single table. Who writes about what, what they’ve posted recently — you can see it all at a glance. Below is a demo I had it do for five accounts, pulling names, handles, bios, and follower counts all at once:

5. Before Installing, Check the Permissions

Community template quality varies. And since all Bots share a single cloud computer, browser login states and credentials are shared too: any template you install can, in theory, reach anything any other Bot can reach.

So before installing, check what permissions it asks for. Templates that want to post, delete, make paid API calls, or read passwords — hold off on installing those, and definitely don’t install them on an account that’s connected to your password vault.

Once these first two things are done, your Bot can already work for you. From here, pick the scenarios based on what you want it to do.

Chapter 4: Daily Use — 4 Scenarios

Every section follows the same structure: when you need it, how to do it, what to watch out for, and finally my own choice.

1. Running X

When you need it: You’re managing an X account and spending time every day checking mentions, finding topics, and looking at analytics.

How to do it: Treat the Bot from earlier as your personal X information station.

• Have it do a daily pass through your account’s mentions and surface the questions that need a reply;
• Track several keywords and have it organize the day’s high-engagement posts and main viewpoints;
• When doing a review, have it pull your original posts over a period of time and compare views, likes, comments, and quotes to identify content that performed notably differently;
• Add a viral post monitoring Skill, set up a routine, and have it compile a daily digest of hot posts in your niche and send it to you on schedule.

What to watch out for: X search has rate and volume limits: 30 requests per minute, 1,000 per day, 25 results per request, counted on a fixed window. These are numbers I gathered myself and picked up from group chats — not officially published — so take them as reference only. Also, its summaries can miss context. Have it gather material when you’re picking topics, but always go back to the original post for the final judgment.

My own choice: X search is the number one reason I can’t live without Grok Bot. I basically don’t browse X manually anymore — when there’s a viral post, it tells me right away.

2. Delegating Tasks from Your Phone

When you need it: You want to hand off tasks from your phone without opening a computer.

How to do it: After the October 22 update, Grok Bot’s mobile app can call several of your phone’s system apps. Open Connected Apps in the app, select the iPhone tab — as of my October 29 screenshot, it listed 6 items: Calendar, Home, Reminders, Contacts, Location, and Alarms. Each one requires you to tap Allow individually — nothing gets enabled all at once. You need the latest version of the app and a subscription that supports Grok Bot.

The two I find most useful are 1 Calendar and 2 Reminders. Tell it “Remind me about a meeting tomorrow at 3 PM,” and at the right time a system notification pops up on your phone.

If you don’t want to open the app separately, you can also reach your Bot directly in X DMs (X Chat) and Slack.

What to watch out for: When it first launched, the permissions page also had a “Messages” item (reading and writing SMS). By the time I took my screenshot, it was already gone. Don’t count on it for sending and receiving texts and iMessages — go by what your own app actually lists.

My own choice: This is the point where I felt that going with a big vendor’s integrated solution really does save time.

3. Managing Email and Passwords

When you need it: You have several email inboxes and spend a lot of time just triaging email; or you’re constantly logging into various websites.

How to do it:

• Email: Forward your QQ, Outlook, 163 and other emails to a single Google primary inbox, label them by source, and let Grok Bot scan and compile summaries on a schedule. For messages that need a reply, have it draft one first so you can check before sending. Grok Bot can now also claim its own dedicated email address — good for registering test accounts;
• Passwords: Self-host Bitwarden or use the official free version, install Bitwarden’s CLI tool bw in Grok Bot’s cloud computer, configure access credentials, and let it read passwords on demand. I find it more comfortable than 1Password.

What to watch out for: Give it credentials with the smallest possible permissions, and never hand over your master password or recovery key. And remember: all Bots share one machine. Passwords meant for Bot use should live in their own vault with only low-risk entries like test accounts. Don’t install shady community templates on an account connected to your password vault.

My own choice: Both email and passwords are integrated into my workflow. Now a single sentence is all it takes to have it handle everything downstream.

4. Images and Video

When you need it: You need covers, illustrations, or want to turn an article into a video.

How to do it:

• Image generation: I packaged my workflow for making simple covers with the Grok image model into a Skill — one sentence, one image;
• Video: There are 3 community video Bots I think are worth trying. Grok Bot Video Studio does text-to-video with multi-shot storyboarding and subtitles; Grok Studio turns articles, PDFs, and web pages into explainer videos with an AI presenter; Video Editor does automatic editing, subtitles, and B-roll (supplementary footage inserted between talking-head segments) for talking-head footage, built on FFmpeg, Whisper, and Remotion.

For example, the image below is a cover I had the image and video assistant make for my DeepSeek Harness long-form post: 1 it produced four styles at once, and I picked one to refine.

What to watch out for: Video Bots eat quota — test with short footage first.

My own choice: More than enough for everyday covers and illustrations.

Chapter 5: Writing Code with It

This chapter is for readers who code. If you don’t, skip straight to Chapter 6.

1. Grok Bot + Cursor: Leave the House with Just Your Phone

When you need it: You want to hand off development tasks from your phone and just do the review when you get back to the computer.

Prepare three things first: A subscription that supports Grok Bot, a GitHub account, and a Cursor account.

How to do it:

• Setup: Link Grok Bot and Cursor under the same account, and connect both to a GitHub repository;
• Delegation: Hand the task to Grok Bot on your phone, and it dispatches it to Cursor Cloud;
• Development and testing: Cursor Cloud writes code and runs tests in the cloud, sending back results via screenshots and screen recordings;
• Merge and release: Go through a GitHub PR (Pull Request — a review request before merging code), with CI/CD (automated testing and deployment) as a safety net.

Across the entire workflow, I only do three things: submit the task, review the results and merge the PR, and confirm the release. For example, in the flow below: 1 I said on my phone, “Submit a test PR and run through the Cursor workflow,” 2 it dispatched to the cloud agent, opened the PR, I verified the changes myself, and then waited for my confirmation to merge.

What to watch out for: Before going live, review the code and permissions yourself. When AI writes the code, you’re the one signing off.

2. Claude Code Directs, Grok Bot Works

When you need it: You normally use Claude Code or Codex as your main tool and want to offload some of the work.

How to do it: Grok Bot accounts live under Cursor accounts, and linking subscriptions requires logging in through a Cursor account first. So by using the cursor-grokbot-agents extension, you can have the Agent SDK call Grok Bot through your Cursor account — while keeping its original conversations, memory, and tools. Three steps:

• Have Claude Code or Codex install the extension itself;
• Open Grok Bot authorization;
• Start the connection and bind the Bot you want to use.

Once connected, the division of labor is: Claude Code breaks down tasks, Grok Bot writes code and opens PRs, Cursor Cloud runs tests, and Claude Code does the final review. Same goes if the main Agent is Codex instead.

What to watch out for: Production code still needs your own review.

3. The DeepSeek Harness Thing Still in Progress

There are already several community projects that let DeepSeek Harness and Grok Bot dispatch tasks to each other, but none of them connect directly — they rely on relays like webhooks. I’m planning to write a plugin myself, and I’ll share it separately once it’s done.

My own choice: For coding, my current main line is Grok Bot + Cursor, with Claude Code as the conductor.

Chapter 6: The Third Thing, and Keeping It Stable

1. Memory Deep Clean (The Third Thing)

Why it gets dumber over time: With prolonged use, memories, personas, and Skills pile up, and duplicate or contradictory instructions start appearing. It doesn’t know which one to follow, and performance gradually degrades. There’s another reason I can only guess at: model routing is a black box, and simpler tasks might get routed to a lighter-weight model.

I ran into this exact problem back when I used Hermes. And Grok Bot’s memory can’t be deleted with precision — I’ve tried asking it to delete specific memory entries or reorganize them, and some just can’t be done. What you can do is periodically prompt it to optimize itself, especially the Skills and memories. So my recommendation is: give it a memory deep clean every two weeks.

How to do it, in four steps:

• Let the AI find the problems first, then decide what to change. Don’t start by deleting — have it list which rules are duplicated, which conflict, and which are outdated;
• Clean up outdated memories and rules. Memories related to old projects and unused tools can all be cleared out;
• Maintain each rule in only one place. Long-term preferences go in memory; specific workflows go in Skills. If the same rule is written in two places, it will eventually conflict;
• After making changes, have the AI self-check — and back up first. Keep a copy before changing, compare the diff afterward, and make sure nothing was deleted by mistake.

Here’s the actual prompt I use, in two steps, ready to copy:

Step 1 (inspect only, no changes):

Scan your own long-term memory, context settings, and all Skills. Find the following four categories of problems, and produce a list first. Do not change anything in this step:

1. Conflicts: New and old rules contradict each other, or the same thing is written differently in two places
2. Duplicates: Content with the same meaning that could be merged into one entry
3. Outdated: Superseded by newer decisions, or pointing to files, sections, or tools that no longer exist
4. Out of sync with data: Conclusions recorded in memory that don’t match my recent actual data or practices

For each item, clearly state: where it came from, what the problem is, and what you recommend doing about it.

Step 2 (handle in two categories):

• Clearly outdated entries, or cases where the new rule is definitively the one that should win: change them directly and tell me what you changed
• Items where I need to make a judgment call: don’t choose for me — list the options and wait for my decision
• When editing Skills and memory: only change the problematic line, don’t rewrite the whole thing
• For entries that can’t be deleted: don’t force it — write a new updated entry to override it, and tell me which ones couldn’t be removed
• Don’t touch any secrets, accounts, or credentials

That last line about “writing a new entry to override” ones that can’t be deleted is specifically for the limitation that memory entries can’t be precisely removed.

I ran this through my research assistant: 1 is the command I sent, 2 it inspected without changing, checked six Skills and 84 memory entries, and produced a problem list.

Step two: 1 for items needing my decision, it listed options A, B, and C; 2 I replied with a single sentence; 3 it made the changes according to my choices, touching only the problematic line in each case.

What to watch out for: Objective facts in your knowledge base are best organized by you — don’t hand them all over to the AI.

At the end of the day, the reason AI gets messy over time is that nobody manages it. The human has to be the AI’s commander.

2. Scheduled Backups

The first time I realized I needed to back things up, I was digging through Grok Bot content and found that some of it was missing. Checking the logs, I discovered the cloud computer had been reset at some point.

It happened again later: the cloud computer rolled back, I clicked Reset myself, and restored to a backup from 3 PM the previous afternoon — but lost changes to one Skill. The official docs also note that if the cloud computer can’t connect during a reset, the most recent changes may be lost.

So anything important needs to be stored outside of it:

• Have it sync a copy to a private GitHub repo every day. Here’s a reference prompt:

Every day at 3 AM, sync all Bots’ Skills, personas, memories, and text files in the working directory to my private GitHub repository. Do not commit any passwords, tokens, or API keys — scan for sensitive information before committing. Before the first run, list the backup manifest and wait for my confirmation.

My backup repo looks like this: 1 an automatic commit at around 3 AM daily; 2 the README states that only text and configs are stored — no tokens, keys, or login states — with automatic scanning before each commit.

• If you want something easier, use a ready-made template: There’s a Backup template in the official marketplace that periodically backs up each Bot’s settings and important files to a private GitHub repo and Google Drive. Note that it’s made by a third-party user, not the official team — check permissions before installing, same as any other template;
• Don’t commit secrets: Even if the backup repo is private, don’t put passwords and API keys in it.

3. Quota

First, distinguish between two kinds of quota: one is Grok Bot’s own weekly quota, which resets every week — this is what gets spent when it does work. The other is X’s API quota from Chapter 2, which is now only used for posting. Everything below refers to the first kind.

When your quota drains fast, it’s usually one of these three things:

• Routines: Every scheduled task run spends quota — set the frequency too high and you’ll burn through it fast;
• Bots messaging each other and group chats: Every reply in a group and every message between Bots counts as usage. A job that two Bots could handle will only cost more if you pull in a group of six;
• Large tasks: Before starting, define a small scope and have it estimate the cost.

Also: once the weekly quota runs out, if pay-as-you-go is enabled, it will keep charging. To avoid overspending, go to Grok Bot’s Settings → Usage & Billing and set the monthly pay-as-you-go cap to 0. If you’re on an X subscription, set it in Additional Usage Credits. Note that the cap doesn’t stop tasks already in flight — you might go slightly over.

Advanced: what if the $30 tier’s quota isn’t enough? My approach is to install Pi on the cloud computer, connect it to OpenRouter’s free models, and have Grok Bot offload simple tasks to Pi. After topping up $10 on OpenRouter, free model call limits go from 50 per day to 1,000, at 20 per minute. Note: this isn’t unlimited tokens, and Grok Bot’s own orchestration also costs quota.

4. Multiple Bots and Scheduled Tasks

Chapter 1 mentioned three quirks of the cloud computer. Here they are in detail:

• It goes to sleep when nobody’s using it. Cron jobs (Linux’s built-in scheduler) and background processes you set up yourself will be paused while it sleeps;
• All Bots share one machine. Browser login states, files, and CLI credentials are all shared. The official docs put it this way: each Bot’s screen is just a different working surface, not a different security boundary;
• After a rebuild, not everything survives. Files and login states generally persist, but software you installed yourself won’t necessarily be kept.

Also, its 16 GB of RAM gets reclaimed partially when you’re not using it and returned to you when you are. So don’t treat it like a server you can mess around with freely. Here’s what to do:

• Multiple Bots sharing one machine: Assign each Bot its own directory, and grant only the minimum permissions needed;
• Scheduled tasks may be delayed or missed: Periodically check Run History. For truly important tasks, add an independent layer of monitoring on a VPS or GitHub Actions;
• A small tip: Once you’ve created a lot of Bots, the default avatars all look similar. You can have it generate a set of avatars based on each Bot’s role so you can tell them apart at a glance.

Chapter 7: How I Use It Today

Over the past month, I made a significant adjustment: I set aside the Hermes Agent I’d been maintaining myself for a long time and switched my daily driver to Grok Bot.

Why I dropped Hermes. There were plenty of sunk costs: three-layer processing, context compression, intelligent routing — and constant maintenance to keep up with GPT model changes. Grok Bot is vendor-maintained, more open than Muse, and the community has projects that integrate with WeChat. Hermes is a white box — you manage everything; Grok Bot is a black box — no maintenance from me.

My subscriptions got trimmed along the way. Now it’s $120/month: Claude Pro at $20 plus Grok Bot at $100. I cancelled the $100 GPT subscription and the separate X Premium+. On the $100 tier, I use at most about 70% each week — more than enough for daily use.

Things I used to rely on GPT for now go to Grok Bot. Image generation uses Grok’s image model, wrapped in a Skill — one sentence, one cover. Video goes to the video Bots from Chapter 4. Computer Use is handled with a third-party browser plus MCP or Skill — after all, Grok Bot is itself a high-spec cloud computer.

The trade-offs are real: Computer Use isn’t as flexible as before, and image and video generation are just adequate. But in exchange, X data collection, Grok Bot with Cursor for coding, and the mobile side — all fully covered.

Grok Bot isn’t perfect at everything. Data gets reset, and routing is a black box. The data problem I address with backups; with routing, I can’t control it, so I break tasks into smaller pieces and verify results. AI has no right or wrong — only what your needs are.

Chapter 8: Common Pitfalls and a Quick Reference

1. Common Pitfalls

2. A Quick Reference Table

Grok Bot updates fast — this list might need revising in a month. But the three principles of “read-only first, use what exists, clean up regularly” — I think those will always hold.

One last thought to leave you with:

Only when an Agent can enter real tools and bring back correct results does it have any value in being used.

About the Author

Xiao Mo | AI Agent practitioner | Pi / DeepSeek Harness / Grok Bot / Claude Code | Author of the Pi Blue Book | @xiaomovps | Contact: xiaomovps.com