grok-build

Grok Build is xAI's answer to Claude Code: a terminal coding agent that reads your codebase, edits files, runs commands, and works through multi-step tasks in a full-screen TUI. The client is Apache-2.0, real open source. It also runs headless for CI and plugs into editors through the Agent Client Protocol.

Install is one curl command, no GPU, no local model. That's because there is no local model: first launch signs you into an x.ai account, and every useful thing it does calls Grok on xAI's servers. Building from source needs Rust, but almost nobody needs to.

Worth trying if you already pay for Grok or want to compare agents; the MCP and skills support means your existing server configs mostly carry over. Aider and OpenHands do the same job model-agnostic; Codex CLI and Gemini CLI are the same open-client, vendor-model play from OpenAI and Google.

The catch: open source here means the client, not the brains. It's locked to xAI's models and billing, there are no tagged releases yet, and a single squashed commit hides the real development history. The code is free; the tool isn't usable without a paid account.