Grokbot is xAI and Cursor's attempt at an AI agent that doesn't just chat, it uses a computer. Each bot you create gets its own machine in the cloud, with Chrome, a file manager, and its own operating system, and it keeps working after you close your laptop. I spent a week building three bots to see whether that idea holds up in practice.
Prefer the quick version? I covered the three bots I built, the shared-login trap, and my full verdict in this video:
What Grokbot actually is
You download it from x.ai/bot as a desktop app, not a website. You make a bot with a name and a short description of its job, and it spins up its own virtual computer to get started. Because that computer lives in the cloud, the bot runs on its own, 24/7, without touching your machine.
Why I tested it
I wanted to know if computer-use is real yet or still a demo. So I built three bots with very different jobs: one to find startups that raised seed funding recently and pull the founder names and amounts, one to compare flight prices from Delhi to Tokyo, and one to check the price of a phone across five stores. Same setup each time.
Where it provides value
The genuinely new part is that Grokbot skips the API problem. A huge chunk of the internet has no API an AI can plug into, and even when there is one it rarely lets you do everything the website can. Grokbot gets around that by using the site directly, logging in, clicking through pages, and downloading files the way a person would. It ran with my laptop shut, and I could take over the virtual computer from the mobile app. The teach-a-task feature is the standout: you record yourself doing something fiddly once, it watches the recording frame by frame, and turns it into a reusable private skill.
The main catch
Two things stood out. First, reliability. It got stuck on simple clicks, brought back half the data, and sometimes just froze on easy tasks. Second, and more important, the virtual computer and its logins seem shared across all your bots. I signed into Google on one bot and the others could suddenly reach every site tied to that login. Convenient, but you should be deliberate about which accounts you hand it.
The settings and habits to change first
Always require approval before the bot sends an email, publishes anything, books a flight, buys a product, or deletes something. For anything complicated, record a demo with teach-a-task instead of hoping it figures the task out alone. And keep sensitive logins on bots you trust, given the shared-computer behavior.
How it compares to Claude Code and Codex
Claude Code and Codex can drive a browser too and do more flexible work, but they usually run on your machine, you kick them off yourself, and they stop when your computer is off. Grokbot's lane is different: watching web pages, checking prices on a schedule, moving data between apps, and grinding through repetitive screen work in software you already use. It is not a replacement for a coding agent.
Who should and shouldn't try it
The cheapest plan is $200 a month, and that does include Cursor Ultra. If you already burn through a lot of AI tokens and you're fine switching your subscription to Cursor Ultra, the price makes more sense. If you just want the bot, it's a lot to pay for something this early. Try it on the free week if you have one repetitive task nothing else can automate.
My verdict
Grokbot is a real step in the right direction. Instead of waiting for every website to build an API, it lets an AI use a computer the way we do, and if that gets reliable enough it could automate almost anything you can do on a screen. Right now the automation isn't consistent, the trial is tiny, and the price is steep, so I wouldn't tell most people to pay for it yet.
Have you tried Grokbot or another computer-use agent yet? Tell me in the comments. If you like quick, honest AI-tool reviews, follow my YouTube channel for the next one.
Links and sources
- Grokbot (xAI + Cursor): https://x.ai/bot
- Full video review: https://youtu.be/rUfvWFPYGMo
- More AI tool breakdowns + weekly news: https://goventure.live https://youtu.be/rUfvWFPYGMo
- My testing notes: the three bots, the shared-login behavior, and the reliability misses are all shown in the video above.
Tags: #ai #agents #cursor #aitools
