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Grok Build (xAI) sessions

Codeman can drive Grok Build (xAI's grok CLI, the agent behind docs.x.ai/build) as a session backend, alongside Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex, Gemini, Antigravity and Pi. grok is a seventh run mode: its own PTY, its own tmux session, its own tab identity (monochrome charcoal, gk badge). It is not a location overlay like Docker or remote-SSH cases, and it is not a web tab.

The design rationale behind each decision below lives in grok-integration-plan.md. Everything here was verified against grok 1.0.5.

Install

curl -fsSL https://x.ai/cli/install.sh | bash

The installer places the binary in ~/.grok/bin and symlinks it into ~/.local/bin (it also installs an agent alias Codeman ignores). grok update self-updates.

Codeman resolves the binary via the server PATH and then the usual install locations, ~/.grok/bin first. grok is a name with known squatters (the unrelated @vibe-kit/grok-cli npm package also installs a grok bin), so like pi the resolver does not trust a PATH hit on its own: it runs grok --version once and requires version-shaped output (grok 1.0.5 (5115b46bc9)). Check what it resolved:

curl -s localhost:3000/api/grok/status | jq
# { "available": true, "path": "/home/you/.grok/bin", "version": "1.0.5" }

The endpoint carries version on top of the sibling /api/*/status shape precisely so a misresolution is visible rather than presenting as "the mode just doesn't work".

Authenticate

  • Browser OAuth (default): the first grok run opens a sign-in flow; in a Codeman pane you get the device-code screen with a URL to open elsewhere. Credentials land in ~/.grok/auth.json (0600) and refresh automatically.
  • Device code: grok login --device-auth, made for SSH boxes and headless hosts.
  • API key: export XAI_API_KEY="xai-..." (console.x.ai). Used as a fallback when no session token exists. As a per-session Codeman envOverride it flows through socket-scoped tmux setenv, never the spawn command line.
  • Enterprise OIDC: GROK_OIDC_ISSUER / GROK_OIDC_CLIENT_ID.

What Codeman wires up

GrokConfig (per session, persisted in state.json, round-trips through respawn):

Field Flag Notes
model --model <v> e.g. grok-4.5, or a custom [model.<name>] from config.toml
alwaysApprove --always-approve Grok's bypassPermissions mode; deny rules still apply on top
continueSession --continue Most recent session for the working directory; skipped when resuming
resumeSessionId --resume <v> Ids only, never titles (grok's own --resume also matches titles)

Every value is regex-validated and dropped (not escaped) if it fails, because the result is interpolated into the pane's bash -c "..." command.

The Run button sends grokConfig: { alwaysApprove: true }, the same product decision as Claude's --dangerously-skip-permissions default and Antigravity's --dangerously-skip-permissions: Codeman sessions exist for autonomous work. Keep hard limits as deny rules in ~/.grok/config.toml (they apply in every mode), and in multi-user mode a non-granted owner's alwaysApprove is forced off server-side; a bare grok spawn is grok's own ask-mode default.

Env overrides: the GROK_* prefix (GROK_HOME, GROK_CONFIG, GROK_MEMORY, GROK_WORKFLOWS, GROK_SANDBOX, GROK_OIDC_*, ...) plus the XAI_* vendor namespace (XAI_API_KEY) are allowlisted. Foreign provider keys are not, as ever.

What Codeman deliberately does NOT wire up

  • --permission-mode, --allow/--deny. The boolean covers the autonomous case; the full rule surface is a follow-up with UI.
  • -p/headless, --output-format, --json-schema. Codeman drives the TUI.
  • --worktree, --sandbox, --reasoning-effort, -s/--session-id, --fork-session, --agent/--agents. Tracked as follow-ups in the plan doc.

Terminal behavior

Grok renders a fullscreen alternate-screen TUI (scrollback pane + prompt, mouse supported). Under Codeman it runs inside tmux like every external CLI, so the fullscreen rendering stays inside the pane and the browser terminal shows tmux's repaints; grok stays out of the alt-screen strip list on purpose (the opencode case, not the Ink case). If a pane renders oddly, grok doctor checks terminal, color and input support without starting a session, and ~/.grok/pager.toml can force alt_screen = "inline".

On touch devices grok currently gets the buffered local-echo overlay like Claude, Gemini, OpenCode and Pi. This is the fallthrough default and has not been measured against an authenticated grok composer; if grok turns out per-keystroke reactive the way codex was (issues #218/#219/#220/#222), the fix is the 'off' branch in _updateLocalEchoState (terminal-ui.js).

Docker cases

The agent image installs grok in its own Dockerfile step (not npm; xAI's installer targets $HOME/.grok/bin with no --dir override, so the binary is copied to /usr/local/bin). Rebuild with the mandatory --no-cache:

node scripts/build-agent-image.mjs --no-cache

Credentials are seeded, not shared: auth.json, config.toml and pager.toml are copied into the container's own ~/.grok, so an in-container grok never writes refreshed OAuth tokens back to the host and docker commit exports stay secret-free. Only those three files, because ~/.grok also holds sessions/, memory/ and the ~160MB binary under downloads/. Trade-off, same as pi: in-container sessions are invisible host-side, so grok -c inside a Docker case only sees that container's own history.

Remote SSH cases

grok mode is routed through an interactive login shell (exec "$SHELL" -i -l -c 'grok'), because sshd's remote-command PATH does not include ~/.grok/bin. Per-session config and envOverrides do not cross ssh and are rejected rather than silently ignored; use the per-host command override instead. For auth on the remote host, grok login --device-auth exists for exactly this.

Known gaps

  • No idle/completion hook yet. Idle detection falls back to output-stabilization like the other external CLIs. Grok has a hooks system, so a Codeman hook POSTing to /api/hook-event is the highest-value follow-up.
  • No response viewer. Grok writes ACP JSONL sessions under ~/.grok/sessions/<encoded-cwd>/<session-id>/updates.jsonl; nothing reads them yet.
  • Cron jobs mis-detect readiness. The readiness poll looks for ❯ or a token count, neither of which grok prints, so a grok cron job burns its poll budget and then sends the prompt anyway. It works; it is just slower to start.
  • Ralph, respawn heuristics, token/CLI-info parsing and the ❯ readiness probe are off for grok, as for every external CLI.