xai-org/grok-build, now open source
Simon Willison · Simon Willison · 2026-07-15
xAI open-sourced its Grok Build coding agent under Apache 2.0 — containing 844,530 lines of Rust — after severe community backlash over the tool silently uploading entire user directories, including SSH keys and password databases, to xAI's Google Cloud infrastructure.
Appears in
Extraction
Topics: coding-agentsdata-privacyopen-sourcexaiai-coding-tools
Claims
- Grok CLI was uploading entire user directories to xAI's Google Cloud buckets by default, including sensitive files like SSH keys and password manager databases.
- xAI deleted all previously retained user data and disabled the upload feature following community backlash.
- xAI released the full Grok Build codebase under Apache 2.0, comprising approximately 844,530 lines of Rust with only about 3% vendored code.
- The codebase contains tool implementations ported from competing coding agents including OpenAI Codex and OpenCode.
- The subagent system prompt instructs the model not to reveal its contents, but the main agent prompt does not include this instruction.
Key quotes
One user reported running it in their home directory and seeing it upload 'my SSH keys, my password manager database, my documents, photos, videos, everything'.
As a precautionary measure, all user data that was uploaded to SpaceXAI before now will be completely and utterly deleted.
For comparison, openai/codex is 950,933 lines of Rust. Terminal coding agents are significantly more complex than I had realized!