Hey Bot Sis & Bruv,
Big one this past week: xAI rolled Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor and X Premium into one plan, The X Subscription (Oct 12). Now you can roll all of those into one. Going from three subscriptions to one?! We like consolidation in this club.
There's one trade-off to be aware of if you were using Cursor for coding: If you use third-party models (aka Claude or older ChatGPT models) in the Cursor app, that usage now bills separately at API prices. For me, logging into Claude Code or Codex right inside Grok Bot (Tip 2 below) kinda makes up for it. Full details are on the x.ai page.
What to do: check whether you signed up for Grok Bot through Cursor, X or Grok. Cursor folks can combine accounts at cursor.com/unify. SuperGrok and X Premium subscribers will see the switch option in billing settings as it rolls out. And if you run a small business with employees, do it through a Teams plan so the whole crew is on one bill.
A few more updates from the Oct 11 release:
Bots can pay - your Bot can now pay with X Money or Stripe Link.
App cards in chat - Figma, Notion and Canva show up as interactive cards right in the chat.
Approval before the big stuff - before it sends, posts, buys or deletes anything, your Bot checks your messages for a yes.
3 Tips & Tricks
01. Give your Bot an email alias for each job
Your Bot's email now supports plus aliases. It can send and receive at a dedicated alias, and you can set routines that only run on mail sent to one alias. Agencies can have the Bot sign up for each client's competitors under its own address, with one alias per client, so every brand's mail stays separate.
02. Plug your Claude and ChatGPT plans into your Bot
Andrew Warner connected the Claude and ChatGPT plans he already pays for to his Grok Bot. No API key and no new subscription: the Bot installs Claude Code and Codex on its own computer and you log in once. He says his Mac and his Bot both stay logged in. Send your Bot this:
Connect to my Claude and ChatGPT subscriptions using Claude Code and Codex. Open a terminal on your computer, install both command-line tools, and walk me through logging in to each with my existing plans. Don't use API keys. When you're done, run a short test on each and tell me it worked.
03. Steal report rules from aircraft mechanics
Michael Fenech borrowed his Bot's report rules from aerospace maintenance writing: lead with the answer, keep facts, assumptions and recommendations apart, and give every action an owner and a date. Add those three rules to your Bot's description so you can act on its reports without digging.
2 Bot Templates
01. Stalk Bot
By Shub Gaur.
Signs up for your competitors' newsletters and products under its own research email, records their onboarding, and watches their site, pricing, changelog, jobs and X. Each report says what changed against your positioning and suggests counter-moves. It never posts or contacts anyone.
02. Stills & Clips Desk
By Matt Palmer.
Pulls stills, thumbnails and short clips out of your footage, sized for where each one goes. It also cleans up screenshots and writes the caption and alt text. Handy when one UGC shoot needs to become ad, email and social assets.
1 Agentic Alpha
Context beats clever prompting.
As outlined in the 3-Day Crash Course, the first thing you should do after setting up your first Grok Bot is attaching "connectors" or plugins.
That means logging into and granting access to the apps you use every day:
Files & Data → Google Drive/Docs/Sheets/Slides/Gmail
Call Recorders → Fathom, Fireflies, Wispr Notetaker, etc.
Project Management → Notion, Asana, Trello, etc.
With those plugins installed, your bots now have relevant information that creates a "web of connections" to inform anything you ask.
If you don't get valuable outputs, even with fancy-schmancy prompts, try adding more plugins and asking your Grok Bots to sift through the data.
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Stay sassy and classy ✌️
Jesse