Grok Bot Guide (2026): MCP, Setup & Automation

Grok Bot is the newest of the big three AI agents to get a persistent, cloud-hosted teammate, arriving through an unusual route: a SpaceX rollup that folded xAI and Cursor into one company inside a single year. xAI's flagship consumer product, Grok, already reaches 117 million monthly active users as of March 2026, and Grok Bot itself launched in beta on August 11, 2026 starting at $200 a month.¹² For agencies already running Claude or ChatGPT connectors, the interesting part is not the chat window. It is that Grok Bot runs on its own cloud computer, keeps named agents with memory across turns, and can be handed real, credentialed work such as scheduling a week of social posts through posterly.

This is a long read (about 17 minutes). The table of contents on the right lets you jump. Every stat has a footnote, and anywhere the public documentation was silent we say so rather than guess, including a couple of details posterly verified by hand rather than by citation. If you only want the connection steps, jump to Connect Grok Bot to posterly.

What is Grok Bot?

Grok Bot is one of four surfaces built by SpaceXAI, the AI division formed after SpaceX's all-stock acquisition of xAI closed in early February 2026 (SpaceX valued at roughly $1 trillion, xAI at roughly $250 billion).³ The other three are Grok chat (grok.com and the X app), Grok Build (a terminal coding agent), and the xAI developer API at console.x.ai. xAI itself was incorporated on March 9, 2023 and announced publicly on July 12, 2023 by Elon Musk and eleven founding researchers.⁴ It joins Claude, ChatGPT, and others on posterly's agents overview, which lists every AI client posterly connects to.

Grok Bot's other parent is Cursor. SpaceX agreed to buy Cursor's parent company, Anysphere, for $60 billion in stock on June 16, 2026, and the deal closed on August 14 to 15, 2026. Grok Bot is a joint SpaceXAI and Cursor product and uses Cursor's sign-in rather than a separate xAI account.⁵ Onboarding runs through cursor.com/bot/onboarding, and Cursor's help page describes it plainly: "An agent can use plugins you've connected, work in a cloud computer, and run routines while you're away."⁶

Under the hood, Grok Bot runs on the current Grok model family. Grok 4.6 shipped on August 12, 2026, a day after Grok Bot's own announcement, and xAI says it "builds on Grok 4.5 with a particular focus on long-running agents". API pricing is $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, with a faster variant at roughly twice that price; the model is available in Cursor, Grok Build, the xAI API, OpenRouter, Vercel, and Cloudflare.⁷ Grok 4.5, its predecessor, launched on July 8, 2026 and was co-developed with Cursor.⁸

Grok Bot pricing

Grok Bot is not sold on its own; it rides on top of existing Grok or Cursor plans, per x.ai/bot as of August 2026:²

xAI's own line is blunt about who already has access: "Already on Cursor Ultra or SuperGrok Heavy? Grok Bot is included."² Billing beyond the included allowance is usage-based: "Availability and billing depend on the account and plan," and subscriptions cover a weekly usage allowance, with extra on-demand usage billed by token cost.⁹ The wider Grok consumer lineup starts at Free ($0) and SuperGrok ($30/month), rising to SuperGrok Plus at $100/month for 1080p video; xAI's compare table also lists SuperGrok Lite, Business, and Enterprise tiers, without public prices for all of them.¹⁰

Key Grok Bot statistics in 2026

xAI is now part of a public filer, so some of these numbers come from SpaceX's own S-1 rather than a press release, and we have marked the ones that are third-party estimates rather than primary figures.

The grok.com traffic figures come from third-party aggregators rather than xAI directly, so treat them as directional. Grok Bot itself is too new for public adoption numbers; xAI has not published a user count for it separately from the wider Grok product.

How Grok Bot connects to tools: MCP, connectors, plugins

The Model Context Protocol is the open standard that lets an AI client discover and call tools on a server, whether that server runs locally over stdio or remotely over Streamable HTTP. Grok Bot's answer to "how do I reach my other tools" is built entirely on the remote half of that split, because of how the product itself is architected.

Grok Bot is a cloud computer, not a process on your laptop

Each Bot "runs on a persistent cloud VM with a browser, filesystem, and terminal", and multiple Bots you create share one user-scoped computer and can run in parallel.¹¹ Named Bots "keep memory, files, browser sessions, and preferences across turns", and you can "re-run it on a schedule or on demand" with "no workflow builder or prior Bot setup required".¹¹ A shared /workspace on that computer holds durable files, each Bot gets its own screen, and browser cookies and sessions are shared account-wide.¹² That architecture is also why Grok Bot cannot reach anything on your own machine. Cursor staff answered a forum question about this directly: "Grok Bot does not attach MCP servers that run on your own machine, whether that's stdio or something listening on localhost. The Bot works from a persistent cloud computer, so those local processes aren't reachable from it."¹³

Connectors, skills and routines

Inside Grok Bot, tools show up as connectors and skills. You use Settings → Plugins to discover and install supported connectors and packaged skills, and installed connectors are account-wide across every Bot you run.¹⁴ Composer syntax splits the two concepts: type / in the desktop composer to reference a saved skill, and use @ to mention Bots, groups, routines, and connectors.¹⁴ A skill you install privately can still need enabling per Bot: "If a skill does not appear in the / menu, open it under Settings → Plugins → Yours and enable it for the current Bot."¹⁴

Routines are Grok Bot's scheduling layer. "A Bot can own up to 50 routines, and the app keeps the 20 most recent run records for each routine," and routines can fire on event triggers through Cursor integrations such as a Slack message or a GitHub notification, with long-inactive routines paused automatically.¹⁴ xAI also documents a "teach by demonstration" pattern: "Ask a Bot to follow along as you complete a workflow once. It saves it as a routine and runs it on its own next time."²

MCP specifically: remote only, with a real gap

For a custom MCP server such as posterly's, Grok Bot's own AddMcpServer mechanism accepts only a name, a URL, and optional headers, with no field for a static OAuth client ID, which currently blocks servers that require one.¹⁵ Teams and enterprise deployments follow "your team's existing Cursor plugin and MCP policy," and MCP authentication is shared across Cursor and Grok Bot, with blocked servers disabled from the Grok Bot Plugins page.¹⁶

Regular Grok chat, at grok.com, uses a related but separate custom connectors flow: go to grok.com/connectors, click New Connector, then select Custom, and enter the MCP server URL plus any required authentication.¹⁷ The requirement is the same as Grok Bot's: "Your MCP server must be reachable over the public internet," and localhost or private URLs are rejected. xAI's tunneling guidance notes that Cloudflare quick tunnels break SSE, but Streamable HTTP works, and recommends ngrok for SSE servers.¹⁸

Grok Build: the one surface that supports stdio

Grok Build, xAI's terminal coding agent, is different from both Grok Bot and grok.com. It supports remote HTTP MCP and local stdio MCP side by side. Add a server with grok mcp add <name> -- <command> [args] for stdio, or grok mcp add --transport http <name> <url> [--header ...] for a remote endpoint, with servers configured in ~/.grok/config.toml under [mcp_servers.name]. The /mcps slash command opens the MCP tab inside the TUI, grok mcp list, grok mcp remove, and grok mcp doctor manage servers from the CLI, and OAuth tokens land in ~/.grok/mcp_credentials.json. Grok Build can also read existing configs from ~/.claude.json, .cursor/mcp.json, and .mcp.json, and xAI describes it as "fully compatible with Claude Code".¹⁹ Grok Build's skills are folders containing a SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter, managed through /plugins, /hooks, /skills, and the /mcps modal, with marketplaces defined under [[marketplace.sources]] in the config file. xAI's Plugin Marketplace, launched June 11, 2026, adds grok plugin install <name> --trust with commit-SHA pinning and six launch partners.²⁰

Connect Grok Bot to posterly

posterly ships one MCP server with two transports: a local stdio package on npm and a hosted HTTP endpoint. Because Grok Bot and grok.com only speak to remote servers, the hosted endpoint is the one you want in both places; only Grok Build, the terminal agent, can also use the npm package. The full canonical walkthrough lives on the posterly MCP page, the Grok Bot setup page, and the MCP docs.

Step 1: turn on API access in posterly

Sign up for any posterly plan, then open Dashboard, then API and MCP and enable the API and MCP add-on. It costs $3 a month on top of any plan; the Agency API tier is $29 a month. Click "Create Key" and copy the bearer key, which starts with pst_live_. If you would rather let an agent handle signup itself, the agents signup page and the public start_signup tools cover that path, which we describe in how AI agents sign users up to SaaS.

Step 2: add posterly as a custom connector in Grok Bot

Open Grok Bot's Settings → Plugins, add a custom connector, and paste the hosted endpoint:

Server URL:  https://www.poster.ly/api/mcp
Auth:        Authorization: Bearer pst_live_your_key_here
Wire format: JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTPS (single request, no SSE in v1)

GET https://www.poster.ly/api/mcp returns server info without authentication, which is a fast way to confirm the URL is reachable before you paste a key into it. Once the connector saves, posterly's tools become available to attach with @ to a task, alongside your Bots, groups, routines, and other connectors.¹⁴ Discovery metadata also lives at https://www.poster.ly/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json if you want Grok Bot, or any other agent, to confirm the transport and tool list on its own.

Step 3: use the same flow for grok.com chat

For everyday Grok chat, the steps are nearly identical: go to grok.com/connectors, click New Connector, choose Custom, and paste the same server URL and bearer key.¹⁷ That gives you posterly's tools inside ordinary Grok conversations, separate from a named Bot.

Step 4: verify with a read-only call

Ask Grok Bot: "using the posterly connector, run whoami and then list_accounts." whoami confirms the user, workspace, and scopes your key can reach; list_accounts lists your connected social accounts. A 401 means the key is wrong, and a 403 with insufficient_subscription means the API and MCP add-on is not active on your plan.

Grok Build users: local stdio also works

If you use Grok Build instead of, or alongside, Grok Bot, you can run the npm package directly:

POSTERLY_API_KEY=pst_live_your_key_here \
  grok mcp add posterly -- npx -y posterly-mcp-server@latest

# or the hosted endpoint, same as Grok Bot and grok.com
grok mcp add --transport http posterly https://www.poster.ly/api/mcp

Both write into ~/.grok/config.toml.¹⁹ The stdio route exposes 78 tools, the 75 hosted tools plus posterly's public setup and signup tools, and it can hand files directly to upload_media, which is the practical reason to prefer it for large video. Whichever route you pick, the tool set and the paywall are identical: 75 hosted HTTP MCP tools, listed on the MCP page and in the docs. Scripts or cron jobs that skip MCP entirely can call the same actions straight from the REST API reference.

What you can automate

Grok Bot is built for handing off finished work rather than one-off replies, and xAI's own internal examples (Sales Outbound, Paid Media, Chief of Staff, among others) are all "AI teammates you can give real work to. Bots can sign in to your tools, use them just like you do, and come back with finished work."²²¹ Once posterly is attached as a connector, the same pattern applies to a content calendar. Six workflows we see agencies build with a scheduling connector like posterly:

1. Schedule a week of posts as a routine. Ask a Bot to "draft five LinkedIn posts for next week from this product update, write captions with generate_captions, find a free slot for each with find_available_slot, then create_post after I approve." Save it once with the teach-by-demonstration pattern and it becomes a recurring routine.²

2. Repurpose a blog post across platforms. "Take this article and produce native versions for X, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Facebook, then schedule them across Tuesday and Thursday." create_posts_batch handles up to 25 posts in one confirmed request instead of 25 separate calls.

3. Pull analytics into a report. "Call get_account_analytics for our Instagram and LinkedIn accounts over the last 30 days and tell me which format grew reach." Read calls do not need the same approval as a publish action.

4. Upload media from a public URL. "Pull the image at this URL into posterly with upload_media_from_url, write an Instagram caption, and schedule it for Friday morning." Because hosted HTTP MCP is JSON only, a public URL or the Grok Build stdio route is the right path for larger files.

5. Reply to Google Business reviews. "List new reviews on our Google Business Profile, draft replies with suggest_google_business_review_reply, and show me the options before anything posts." posterly drafts on-brand replies without publishing until you say so.

6. Run a Monday content check as a Bot routine. A scheduled routine that opens with "check list_posts for gaps this week and propose three posts" is a light editorial nudge that runs while you are not watching, one of the exact use cases Grok Bot's routines are built for.¹⁴

Before any create call, validate_post checks the full payload against a platform's rules without consuming quota, which matters more on a persistent agent than a one-off chat, since a Bot might attempt the same task again on its own schedule.

Grok Bot vs Claude vs ChatGPT

The short version: Claude is the cheapest way to get write-capable MCP into a chat client and the only one of the three with a real local stdio option outside a developer tool, ChatGPT has the largest audience and the most built-out business admin controls, and Grok Bot is the only one built from the ground up as a persistent cloud teammate rather than a chat session with tools bolted on. Read the Claude guide and the ChatGPT guide for the mirror-image walkthroughs. Cursor itself, now part of the same company as Grok Bot, supports MCP over HTTP as the recommended transport for its Cloud Agents, explicitly noting that "SSE and mcp-remote are not supported" there.²⁵ posterly also has dedicated setup pages for Hermes, OpenClaw, and Poke, and the posterly CLI, all riding on the same key and the same MCP endpoint.

Limits, security and gotchas

Platform availability is narrower than most agents. Grok Bot's desktop app supports macOS on Apple silicon and Intel and Windows on x64 and Arm64, plus an iPhone app for iOS 18 and later. xAI's own FAQ is explicit: "Linux desktop, Android, and iPad are not supported at initial launch."²⁶ Some press coverage mentions a Linux build; where that conflicts with the documentation, we followed the documentation.

No local reach, ever. Because every Bot runs on a shared cloud VM, it cannot see a local MCP server, localhost, or a private IP, on your machine or anyone else's.¹³ If a workflow genuinely needs a local process, Grok Build is the surface for it, not Grok Bot.

MCP OAuth is limited. The AddMcpServer form only takes a name, a URL, and optional headers, with no static OAuth client ID field, which blocks some enterprise MCP servers today.¹⁵ posterly does not require this, since its hosted endpoint authenticates with a plain bearer key.

Privacy and account boundaries. "Grok Bot uses Cursor authentication and account data settings. Training opt-out follows the applicable Cursor account and privacy settings," and "Legacy Privacy Mode is not supported."²⁷ xAI also warns: "Do not use separate Bots as a security boundary," and "Deleting a Bot does not remove shared-computer files or browser sessions." Users still enter their own passwords, two-factor codes, and CAPTCHAs when a Bot hits one.²⁷

No published spend cap, and shared account state. Premium seats get a weekly usage allowance and standard seats get a trial or on-demand usage; xAI has not documented a hard spend cap for Grok Bot. Installed connectors and browser sessions are shared account-wide across every Bot, not scoped per Bot.¹²¹⁶

posterly-side limits. Create-post calls are capped at 100 requests per hour per key, with separate higher limits for media writes and reads; create_posts_batch bundles up to 25 posts per request. Keys carry scopes such as posts:write, and a key scoped to one workspace rejects calls for another. The hosted upload_media tool accepts base64 up to about 5MB decoded; use upload_media_from_url or Grok Build's stdio route for larger assets.

A note on unverified paths. xAI's documentation does not describe a Grok Bot menu option for installing a skill directly from a GitHub URL; that pattern is documented for Grok Build's plugin marketplaces instead. In posterly's own hands-on testing of the Grok Bot beta, pointing it at a skill file's GitHub URL and asking it to install it did produce a usable skill, but treat that as an observed workaround, not a documented feature.

Best for, not best for

Grok Bot plus posterly is well-suited for

• Teams already paying for Cursor Ultra or SuperGrok Heavy, since Grok Bot is included rather than a separate purchase
• Agencies that want a named, persistent agent per client rather than a fresh chat session every time
• Routine-driven publishing, where a Bot checks a content calendar on a schedule and proposes posts without prompting
• Teams that already trust Cursor's MCP and plugin policy, since Grok Bot inherits it directly

Grok Bot is not the best fit for

• Budget-conscious solo creators, since the entry price is $200/month against Claude's free connector tier; see the Claude guide
• Anyone who needs a local MCP server, since Grok Bot cannot reach your machine at all; use Grok Build or a desktop client instead
• Linux, Android, or iPad users, none of which are supported at initial launch²⁶
• Enterprise MCP servers that require a static OAuth client ID, until xAI extends the connector form¹⁵

Final word

Grok Bot is the clearest sign yet that "AI agent" now means a persistent, credentialed cloud teammate, not a longer chat session. It skips local MCP entirely in exchange for a shared cloud computer, named Bots with memory, and routines that run on their own schedule, and it inherited Cursor's plugin and MCP policy through the same acquisition that built it. For a social team, that trade is worth making once the price fits: posterly meets Grok Bot on the one transport it supports, hosted HTTP at https://www.poster.ly/api/mcp, with the same 18 platforms and scoped keys the dashboard uses everywhere else.

Start on the Grok Bot setup page or the agents signup page, add posterly as a custom connector, and ask a Bot to draft and schedule your first week of posts before you hand it the keys to a routine.

Footnotes