Grok Bot, Custom Agents and API Bots: Three Different Things

Grok Bot is an agent app at x.ai/bot. It launched in beta on 11 August 2026. The maker is SpaceXSI (formerly xAI), working with Cursor, which runs the infrastructure. Older articles may say "xAI" or "SpaceXAI". It's the same company.

A Bot is a named AI agent that is persistent: it keeps its job, memory and settings from one conversation to the next instead of starting fresh each time. You give it one job, its sources and its limits. It signs in to your apps and websites, works through multi-step tasks in the background, reports progress, and pauses for your approval before risky actions such as sending an email.

Finance example. A Bot called "Close Watch" reads the close checklist in Google Sheets and the #close channel in Slack, then keeps a status tracker up to date. It reads only. It doesn't edit the checklist or post anything. With a chat assistant, you'd paste the checklist in again every day.

This course reflects the product as of 28 October 2026. Grok Bot is still changing. If a label on your screen differs from the one here, go by your screen and the official docs.

A Bot works with four building blocks. You'll use all of them in this course.

• Memory: the preferences, facts, summaries and dated work log a Bot keeps. Memory is not a source of truth. Before anything consequential, ask the Bot to re-check the live source.
• Skill: a saved, reusable procedure. For example, "Variance draft" might cover which export to read, the materiality line and the output columns.
• Routine: runs a workflow on a schedule ("every weekday at 8:00 AM") or when something happens, such as an email arriving at the Bot's own address or a Slack message.
• Page: a report, memo, dashboard or tracker kept in the Bot's Library, which you can share. Pages are still rolling out and aren't yet available on Enterprise teams.

Here's how they fit together for Close Watch. The skill "Close status refresh" holds the steps. A routine runs that skill each weekday at 8:00. The result is a Page called "Close status". Memory holds lasting rules, such as "read only".

All of your Bots share a single cloud computer. It has a browser, a filesystem with a shared folder called /workspace, and a terminal. It also holds every login and browser session your Bots have used. It keeps running when your laptop is closed.

Each Bot gets its own screen, and each Bot runs one computer-use task at a time. Screens are not security boundaries. Different users are kept apart from each other. Bots on the same account are not.

In practice: say your "AP Triage" Bot signs in to the AP mailbox. Every other Bot on your account, including a Bot you set up for personal travel research, can reach that same session and the files in /workspace.

So you can't use separate Bots to create segregation of duties. Keep finance work on an account that does only finance work. Don't mix personal and work accounts. Give each Bot the least access that works. Lesson 3 covers the settings.

The Grok chat app, at grok.com and on mobile, has a separate and much simpler feature. Grok's release notes list "Agent customizations" (17 February 2026) and an "Agent library" (3 March 2026). A Custom Agent is a saved persona: a name, a personality and instructions that you pick inside a chat.

It has no cloud computer, no group of Bots and no routines of its own. It answers when you ask and doesn't act in your apps. The Grok app does have its own Connectors and Automations, but those are features of the Grok app, not of Grok Bot. Custom Agents are covered by your Grok plan.

Third-party guides describe a menu path, a limit of about 4,000 characters for instructions and four agents per account. Those guides disagree with each other, and no official source confirms them. That's why this course compares Custom Agents but doesn't teach how to set one up.

Finance example. You set up a "Variance reviewer" persona and paste an anonymized budget-versus-actuals table into a new chat each month. It drafts in the same style every time, but only when you open it.

The third option is a bot you build yourself. Developers write code that calls Grok models at https://api.x.ai/v1 and run it on servers they control. Official docs recommend the Responses API and label the older Chat Completions route "Deprecated".

An API bot can do only what its code allows, so your developers have to build the approval steps themselves. Billing is per token, plus charges for tool calls, and is separate from subscription plans. It doesn't draw from your plan's weekly pool, which is what Grok Bot uses. xAI publishes no official guides for Slack, Discord or Telegram bots. Developers follow each platform's own docs.

Finance example. IT wants first-draft commentary inside an internal reporting portal, with logging and a sign-off step it controls. That's an API project for developers.

This course compares API bots but doesn't build one. If you want a bot in your team's Slack without writing code, use a Team Bot: a Bot shared with your team and connected through Bring to your team's Slack. A later lesson covers it.

Four questions sort most standing finance work:

1. Does it need to act in your apps, such as reading a Gmail label, a Sheets checklist or a Slack channel? If so, that points to Grok Bot or an API bot.
2. Does it need to run while you're away, on a schedule or a trigger? Grok Bot routines do this. A Custom Agent doesn't.
3. Who will set it up? You, in a desktop app (Grok Bot). You, in chat settings (Custom Agent). A developer, with code and hosting (API bot).
4. How is it billed? Grok Bot draws on the plan's weekly pool, a Custom Agent sits within your Grok plan, and an API bot is billed per token.

For example, AP inbox triage reads new invoices as they arrive and flags anomalies. It has to read a mailbox and run unattended, so it suits Grok Bot. A monthly style check on commentary you paste in by hand needs neither, so a chat persona could cover it.

Whichever you pick, the rule stays the same: the tool prepares, and a named person reviews before anything is released.

Two more names cause confusion, and neither is what this course uses:

• @grok on X is the chatbot that replies to posts.
• @bot on X is the Grok Bot account. When you tag it in a post, it passes that post to your own Bot. It isn't available for X accounts based in Australia, the UK, the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway. This course doesn't use it.

Use only official pages for downloads, plans and help:

• Product and download: x.ai/bot (or cursor.com/dashboard/bot)
• Docs: docs.x.ai/grok-bot/overview
• Plans: x.ai/pricing and cursor.com/help/grok-bot/plans
• What changed: x.ai/changelog/bot

Look-alike sites turn up in search. For example, grok-bots.com appeared in results, but x.ai doesn't link to it, so treat it as unofficial. A finance team has extra reason to be careful: a fake download page or sign-in prompt is an easy way to steal credentials. If your company has an admin, get the download link from them.