xAI's AI coding agent "Grok Build" drew heavy criticism after users discovered it uploaded all files in a directory to xAI's Google Cloud servers. One user reported that SSH keys, password databases, documents, and photos were transferred. Elon Musk then announced that all uploaded user data would be fully deleted. xAI disabled the upload feature and published the full source code on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license to rebuild trust.
Grok Build is a terminal-based coding agent invoked via the grok
command. It can read and edit codebases, run shell commands, search the web, and manage long-running tasks, either interactively, headlessly for scripting and CI, or embedded in editors via the Agent Client Protocol (ACP).
By open-sourcing the tool, xAI wants to provide full transparency. Grok Build can now also run entirely locally. The codebase spans about 844,530 lines of Rust and covers the agent loop, tools, terminal UI, and an extension system for plugins and subagents. Remnants of the upload function are still in the code but disabled. According to xAI, data storage has been off by default since July 12.
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