Grok Bot Is Better Than Its Name Suggests

In June, SpaceX said it would acquire Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding startup tool Cursor, for $60 billion. The deal closed on August 14. Cursor, founded in 2022 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology friends Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, and Aman Sanger, had become one of the most widely used AI coding tools by making large language models easier to use for writing and maintaining software.In time, the AI labs built their own competitors — notably Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex — but neither quite matched Cursor’s interface and tools. Cursor let you switch easily among models from different companies, make inline or sidebar edits, and eventually assign work through a chat interface to multiple agents.In other words, it was a great company — but even by the standards of AI overvaluation, $60 billion seemed like a lot. Cursor’s own models are fast and inexpensive, but its Composer 2 model was built on the Chinese company Moonshot AI’s open-source Kimi K2.5 base. Otherwise, Cursor was a particularly polished wrapper for large language models in an ecosystem already full of wrappers.The price starts to look less absurd once you see what Cursor was building behind the scenes. Released in August, Grok Bot was the most impressive AI product launch since Claude Code — since eclipsed only by Meta’s rival product, Muse. But they are extremely close in capabilities, the two best demonstrations of “agentic” AI, and having used it daily for months now, I would find it hard to imagine switching.Its main problem is the new Grok name, which SpaceX has slapped on it — and from a branding perspective, plenty of workplaces and professional users will not want to connect their work tools to a chatbot that called itself “MechaHitler.”Grok Bot is an agent framework that connects AI to the tools you already use, allowing it to complete one-off jobs or recurring work. Want a summary of your email, reminders about outstanding tasks across your apps, or an agent to complete the same job every morning? It can do that. None of those abilities is unique, but Grok Bot’s easy setup, use, and refinement make it the best option of its kind that I have tried.Like Muse, it’s not just a chat window with plugins but more like a private Slack that you have with a bunch of agents — called Bots — that you can assign for various tasks. Each Bot is a persistent, named agent with memory, its own screen, and access to a shared cloud computer with a browser, file system, and terminal. It can connect directly to services including Gmail, Notion, and Slack; use the browser when no plugin exists; keep working after you close your computer; and run scheduled routines while you are away. Several Bots can work in parallel or hand tasks to one another. For consequential actions — sending an email, publishing, buying something, or deleting data — you can require approval before the Bot acts.Every Tuesday morning, my “Cinema Picks” Bot suggests films showing that week that match my interests. Once I choose a film, it can book tickets for a screening that fits my calendar. Another suggests new brunch spots in London every Sunday that are convenient for my availability and commute; and “Product Bots” lets me know every day when software I use gets an update, there’s a new tech item out I might be interested in, or books on sale that fit my interests. These all were made with a simple message describing what I wanted them to do, and they just work.Just tell a bot what you want it to do, and it will create routines and tasks with minimal involvement from you, and set up new bots for you if you ask. If you want it to do the work differently next time, tell it how, and it will adjust. It can also save certain logins for you in a secure section, so it can access accounts or make payments for you without your involvement — though you can, and should, ask it only to do so with your explicit permission. Grok Bot will write draft emails for me, but can never send or delete emails.It is one of those rare, great tools limited less by capability than by my imagination for how I can use it. And also by cost. Grok Bot access now comes with every paid individual Cursor plan — Pro costs $20 a month, Pro+ $60, and Ultra $200 — with a weekly allowance that rises by tier. The meter reflects agent steps and tokens rather than message count, and extra use can spill into on-demand spending if you enable it. In my use, the Bots have been relatively economical with tokens, but a recurring agent can chew through an allowance if you give it a broad job and let it run.Grok Bot is included with several paid subscriptions, including legacy Cursor Pro, Pro+ and Ultra plans and Premium, Super, and Ultra on The X Subscription. On the newer subscription, Grok Bot shares a weekly usage pool with Cursor and the Grok apps; additional use requires prepaid credits. Legacy Cursor plans instead offer optional on-demand billingThe other flaw is model choice. Cursor proper can use models from multiple providers, while Grok Bot’s model selection is narrower and rollout-dependent. The current Grok 4.7 is fast and relatively capable, but clearly not as smart as the leading models from Anthropic or OpenAI — and though it sometimes will use smarter third-party models to achieve tasks, you can’t tell it when to use certain models. That complexity may belong in the professional Cursor interface, though. Grok Bot’s appeal is that almost anyone can use it.

Grok Bot Is Better Than Its Name Suggests

Grok Bot Is Better Than Its Name Suggests

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