Create live website, app, game, or dashboard, and a developer Grok Build CLI with Grok Build

Grok Build is xAI’s 2026 push to turn Grok from a conversational assistant into a builder. It has two closely related faces: a consumer Build Mode that turns a sentence into a live website, app, game, or dashboard, and a developer Grok Build CLI—a terminal-native coding agent that plans, edits, tests, and ships real codebases.

Both are powered by the same underlying intelligence (now Grok 4.6). The difference is the interface and the audience.

Build Mode: Describe It, Watch It Run

Build Mode (early beta, July 2026) lives inside Grok on grok.com, iOS, and Android. You switch to Build, describe what you want in plain language, and Grok writes the code, renders a working preview inside the conversation, and lets you keep talking to it until it is right. You do not install anything or look at the code unless you want to.

When you are happy, you publish to a grok.me link or a custom domain you already own. Anyone with the link can open the result.

What you can create

• Websites — landing pages, portfolios, business sites.
• Apps — tools with real state and logic: planners, trackers, calculators, simulations, internal utilities.
• Games — arcade racers, puzzles, and interactive 3D worlds that run in the browser.
• Interactive dashboards — live charts and filterable views that pull data through connectors.

Official examples started as single prompts:

• “Build a peaceful 3D driving game: an endless forest I can drive through freely, with no missions and no timers. Make it feel calm.” → a playable forest driver at driver.grok.me.
• An isometric city sim where you zone districts, lay roads, and watch a live economy react.
• A 3D physics playground with spawnable objects, drag-and-drop stacking, and sliders for gravity, bounciness, and friction.
• A 16-step drum sequencer with multiple kits, tempo/swing, genre presets, and the ability to beatbox into the microphone and turn it into a pattern.

You iterate the same way you chat: “make the button blue,” “add a login,” “change the layout to two columns,” or “add a leaderboard.” Grok updates the live preview. Some projects also support microphone input or data connectors so the output is not just a static mock.

This is aimed at SuperGrok Heavy subscribers during the early beta. The same agent intelligence that runs the CLI is doing the work behind the scenes.

Grok Build CLI: The Agent in Your Terminal

The CLI (launched May 2026, later open-sourced) is the professional counterpart. Install it with one command:

curl -fsSL https://x.ai/cli/install.sh | bash

(or the PowerShell equivalent on Windows). Then cd into a project and type grok. It opens a fullscreen, mouse-interactive TUI. First-run authentication happens in the browser; you can also use an API key.

It works with any language and any existing repo. It reads AGENTS.md, skills, plugins, hooks, and MCP servers that you already have.

Core workflow features

• Plan mode — For non-trivial work it first proposes a structured plan. You review, comment on steps, or rewrite the plan. Approved changes appear as clean diffs. Nothing is applied until you say so.
• Subagents — It can spawn specialized agents that run in parallel (research, implementation, review). They can operate in isolated git worktrees for safer large refactors.
• Skills — Reusable workflows that auto-invoke when a task matches or can be called by name. You can capture a session as a new skill with /skillify. Compatible with existing agent conventions.
• Q&A — Ambiguous requests get targeted clarifying questions (multiple-choice style) so the plan is precise.
• MCP, hooks, and plugins — Connect to Linear, Sentry, Grafana, Postgres, browsers, and more. Hooks run scripts on file edits or tool calls. Plugins bundle skills + agents + MCP.
• Memory and AGENTS.md — Persistent decisions across sessions and per-directory conventions.
• Git, terminal, search, and review — Stage/commit/push, run builds and tests with live streaming, fast codebase search, multi-file refactors, line-by-line review before a PR.
• Headless mode — grok -p "your task" for scripts, CI, or bots. Supports structured output and the Agent Client Protocol so other apps can embed it.
• Sandboxed execution and background tasks — Isolated runs plus monitoring of long-running processes.

It also has web search from the terminal, theming, and a built-in /tour or /tutorial that walks you through the tool interactively.

The CLI is the one you use when you already have a codebase, need to ship production software, or want full control over the files. People have used it to scaffold entire machine-learning projects (environment, data, models, tests, CLI app) or to add features to existing sites while respecting design systems.

What It Can Do in Practice

• A non-developer can go from “I need a booking site for my whale-watching tours” to a styled, interactive site with generated images, forms, and a live preview in under an hour, then publish it.
• A developer can drop the CLI into a large repo, ask it to find a p99 latency regression, spawn subagents to investigate and patch, review the diffs, and have it commit.
• You can build internal tools, simulations, or dashboards that talk to real data sources.
• You can generate 3D/WebGL experiences or audio-reactive apps without leaving the chat (Build Mode) or the terminal (CLI).
• The same system can stay in “always approve” or strict plan-and-review mode depending on how much autonomy you want.

The CLI source (the harness and TUI) was later open-sourced, so the agent loop, rendering, compaction, and subagent mechanics are inspectable.

Availability and How to Start

• Build Mode: SuperGrok Heavy, grok.com / iOS / Android. Choose Build in the mode switcher.
• CLI: One-command install. Access has broadened over time; check current xAI docs and your subscription. Headless/API use is also available.

Grok Build does not replace a human engineer on complex, long-lived production systems, but it collapses the distance between “I have an idea” and “here is something that actually runs.” For many websites, internal tools, prototypes, and games, that distance is now a conversation.

What happens on Publish App

When you publish a Grok Build Mode app, Grok instantly deploys it as a live, shareable web app.

1. Grok takes the current working version from the live preview in your chat.
2. It deploys the app to a public URL on the grok.me domain (for example, something.grok.me or a more specific subdomain like driver.grok.me).
3. Anyone with the link can open it in a normal browser—no login or special access required.
4. You can also connect a custom domain you already own (this requires setting DNS records at your domain registrar so it points to the Grok-hosted app).
5. Optionally, you can export the full source code to GitHub. This lets you take the code elsewhere, host it yourself (Vercel, Netlify, etc.), or keep iterating outside Build Mode.

The published version is a real, interactive web app (website, tool, game, or dashboard) that runs in the browser. It is not just a static page or a screenshot.

Can you embed it in your own website?

Yes, in practice you can embed many published Grok apps via a standard iframe.

Independent examples (such as the Build Map gallery) successfully load real *.grok.me apps inside iframes for preview.

Example:

<iframe 
  src="https://your-app.grok.me" 
  width="100%" 
  height="600" 
  frameborder="0"
  allow="fullscreen; microphone; camera"
  style="border: none;">
</iframe>

<iframe 
  src="https://your-app.grok.me" 
  width="100%" 
  height="600" 
  frameborder="0"
  allow="fullscreen; microphone; camera"
  style="border: none;">
</iframe>

Caveats:

• Some apps (especially 3D games that need pointer lock, fullscreen, or certain browser APIs) work better when opened in a full tab rather than an iframe.
• Embedding depends on the headers Grok sets on the hosted pages. If an app blocks framing (via X-Frame-Options or CSP frame-ancestors), the iframe will fail. Many published apps currently allow it.
• There is no official one-click “Get embed code” button from xAI at this time—embedding is just using the public URL.

For full control / reliable embedding

If you need guaranteed embedding, white-labeling, or permanent hosting under your own domain without relying on grok.me:

1. Export the source to GitHub.
2. Host the app yourself (or have Grok Build CLI help you set it up).
3. Then embed or integrate it however you like.

Summary: Publishing gives you an instant public link on grok.me (or your custom domain). Most apps can be embedded with a normal iframe, but for production use cases where you need complete control, exporting the code and self-hosting is the more robust path.