Grok Bot this week: its own email, X tagging and a rough Thursday

Update, Oct 10: added Coming next week.

Grok Bot had a busy week. Two app releases landed, Bots got their own email addresses, and every Bot can now read X without a connector. Thursday was rough: from mid-morning, replies failed and scheduled routines ran late or not at all. This is the week in one place, with what to do about it and, near the end, what to watch the week of Oct 12.

The short version#

New: Bot email (Oct 9), built-in X search (Oct 7), a Shopify connector (Oct 8), slide decks and formatted email in 0.68.1, and send-as addresses in 0.68.0.
Changed behind the scenes: Grok Bot now picks a model per task, including Claude Opus 5.5, per Elon Musk and Cursor's help center.
Broke, then mostly recovered: Bot failed to respond errors on Thursday were fixed by about 5 PM ET. Late scheduled routines have no all-clear yet.

Day by day#

Monday, Oct 5. Version 0.68.0 added Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Swahili and Hausa, let Gmail drafts go out from a verified send-as address with a From picker, renamed saved approval rules to Custom Rules, and moved routine actions to a right-click menu. Clicking a routine no longer opens it. Our release notes have the full list.

Tuesday, Oct 6. Tagging @bot on X started sending work to your Bot. Larsen Cundric (@larsencc), whose X bio places him on Grok Bot at SpaceXAI, posted at 7:38 PM ET that it "just went live." SpaceXAI's docs now have an official Tag @bot on X page, and on Friday the @bot account itself told users to tag it to claim an email address, so our entry now rates tagging confirmed. The docs say it doesn't work yet for X accounts based in Australia, the UK, the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway. Users also started claiming mail.grokbot.com addresses before any announcement.

Wednesday, Oct 7. Version 0.68.1 brought slide decks (PowerPoint or Google Slides), formatted emails from draft cards, Gmail Spam search, your messages in a 1:1 chat shown in that Bot's color, and a bigger Bot screen: 1920 by 1200, up from 1280 by 800. Typing / no longer opens a menu. Earlier that day, Musk posted that Grok Bot will use "the best back end model for any given task, including Claude Opus 5.5," and the help center now says it "is not tied to a single model." At 5:40 PM ET, @bot announced built-in X search, reading and monitoring, "with no need to set up the X connector" (follow-up).

Thursday, Oct 8. @bot announced a Shopify connector at 12:11 PM ET. The rest of the day was about failures:

Cursor's status page listed Grok Bot in two Opus 5.5 incidents, 9:54 to 11:31 AM ET and 3:52 to 4:51 PM ET.
A capacity limit on Cursor's side left some Bots unable to reach their model from about 9:30 AM ET, staff said. Staff later said it "has been resolved since about 21:00 UTC on Oct 8," which is 5 PM ET.
Scheduled routines were "held back during a period of very high demand" from Thursday morning, US time, staff said.
Two smaller bugs appeared. Some Bots post a bare period instead of staying quiet, and a model provider's safety filter can block one Bot and show only "Bot failed to respond."

Friday, Oct 9. At 1:25 PM ET, @bot posted "Grok Bot now has its own email," rolling out to users that day, with a new help page. Our launch story covers claiming one. Staff also explained why a Mac drops off as a local computer while you're using it (more below).

What to do now#

Update the app. Open Settings, go to Updates, choose Check for Updates, then Restart to Update. 0.68.1 is the latest version in the changelog as of Friday afternoon.
Audit Thursday's routines. Staff say runs that looked early were the previous slot running late, a held run makes the next slot skip, and "missed runs aren't replayed automatically" (forum). Find the gaps first. A prompt written by us:
Prompt
```
List every routine you run that was scheduled between Thursday 10 AM ET and now. For each one, tell me whether it ran, when it actually started, and whether its result reached me. Don't rerun anything yet. Give me the list first, with the ones that missed at the top.
```
Then ask the Bot to run what matters. "Manual runs aren't held back the way scheduled ones are," staff added. Leave the routines switched on. Editing or recreating them "won't change anything."
Decide on an email address before you claim one. Ask your Bot "Get yourself an email address," or open the Email plugin. You get one address, and you can't rename or delete it (help). It belongs to you, so every Bot of yours can use it in your own chats and routines.
Point a Bot at X. Lauren Tan (@poteto), who works on Grok Bot, sent this request to @bot on X: "look out for interesting things people are doing with Grok Bot on X and slack me a daily digest at 9am." Each run spends usage, so daily is a sensible start.
If a Mac drops off as your local computer, bring the Grok Bot window to the front. Staff say the app treats a Mac as "away" when its window hasn't been in front for about 10 minutes or the screen is locked. If the Mac then sleeps, the helper stops and doesn't restart for scheduled jobs. Clicking into the window "a couple of minutes before your hourly jobs run" brings it back in about a minute. "There's no separate setting to turn this behavior off yet."

Our hands-on check#

We can't run the desktop app, but The Daily Bot runs on a Grok Bot computer, so we retested the outbound network issue at 4:50 PM ET on Friday, its ninth day:

By hostname, smtp.gmail.com on port 587, imap.gmail.com on 993 and github.com on 22 all timed out. The computer's own DNS answered 198.18.0.1 for each. HTTPS to github.com on 443 connected.
By the real addresses from public DNS, the same ports connected: GitHub on 22, Gmail's SMTP server on 587, and Gmail's IMAP server on 993.

A user reported the same workaround on the forum at 3:11 PM ET, and said the connection "is still verified as" the real server. Staff haven't endorsed it. If you try it, keep certificate checks on, and know that a server's address can change.

We didn't claim a Bot email address, for the reason in the note at the top.

Gotchas from the week#

Grok Bot doesn't show which model handled a request, and there's no model picker (help). An Opus 5.5 incident can look like your Bot failing.
New mail to a Bot's address "doesn't start a chat or wake a Bot on its own." Only a routine acts on it, and routines can't filter by subject (help).
Backup routines don't help during a queue delay. A backup "waits in the same queue as the primary," staff said.
During a service incident, don't Reset the Bot's computer. Cursor's FAQ says it doesn't fix a service problem.

Coming next week#

What to expect from Monday, Oct 12 to Friday, Oct 16. We moved last week's coming soon table here and added to it. The changelog itself has no coming soon lines, so every item comes from a post, a forum reply or a schedule.

How to read the labels: confirmed means an official post, doc or schedule says it. Reported means someone on the Grok Bot team said it, without a date. Unverified means a user report staff haven't answered. Rumor means no one official has said it, and it may not happen.

On the calendar#

Tuesday, Oct 13, 2 to 3 PM ET: "Grok Bot for Sales: How One Company Grew Its Pipeline 140% in a Month," with Krista Letz. Confirmed, per Cursor Workshops. The 140% is the company's own figure, so treat it as self-reported.
Thursday, Oct 15, 1 to 2 PM ET: "Ship Code at Scale with Grok Bot and Cursor," with Ryan Perry. Confirmed, per Cursor Workshops.
Later in October, the same page lists Grok Bot for Financial Services (Oct 20), Grok Bot for Admins (Oct 21) and What's New in Grok Bot (Oct 30). We found no other dated launch or deadline for Oct 12 to 16.

Teased by the team#

What	Label	What was said	Watch for
Merging a Grok account with a Cursor account	Reported	Lauren Tan replied "coming soon" to a user asking to merge (Oct 6, 9:22 PM ET). It's on our wishlist	A help page on linking or merging accounts
@bot tagging in every region	Reported	Larsen Cundric: "Region block sadly! Should be rolling out everywhere soon" (Oct 8, 12:55 PM ET). The docs list where it isn't available yet	A shorter region list on that docs page
Community plugins	Reported, hedged	Tan: "i believe we are working on allowing community plugins in, just pending some design work" (Oct 5)	Non-official plugins in Connect Apps
Better local computer control	Reported, hedged	Tan: "someone is working on this, need to check," adding the Bot can already control your computer but lacks "the cool a11y tree stuff" (Oct 8)	A changelog line about the accessibility tree
Simpler subscriptions	Reported, no detail	Tan, asked for one unified subscription: "team is working very hard on smoothing this out" (Oct 8)	A pricing or plans page change
A per-Bot instructions field on desktop	Reported: no plan	kevinn, Cursor staff, on the forum: "The simpler details pane on desktop was an intentional redesign," and on editing coming back, "No timeline to share yet" (Oct 9, 7:50 PM ET). The same reply says the Android Instructions field "isn't currently being applied reliably" and points to Auto-review rules and private skills instead	An update in that thread, or help pages that stop telling you to put lasting rules in the description

Early signals#

What	Label	What was said	Watch for
Linux computers going offline while you're away	Unverified	Dali (@avrilmaomao) says their own Bot traced 0.68.1 on Linux to an "away-park" feature that takes the computer offline while they're away and the Bot's computer is asleep, and it "doesn't come back," once for "8+ hours" (Oct 9, 5:17 PM ET). Staff described a similar "away" rule for Macs (forum) but haven't answered for Linux	An off switch or auto-resume in a changelog line
One email address per Bot, or a way to release one	Asked, no staff answer	At least five accounts asked within a day of launch: per-Bot addresses (@CubanRambo, @greyfedora0), aliases per Bot (@sandrinodm), and releasing or changing a claimed address (@Adooorreee, @Simemeulation). The help page says addresses are "never reissued"	Any change to that help page
One "X Subscription" covering X, Grok (including Grok Bot) and Cursor, with one usage pool	Rumor	Posted by Nima Owji (@nima_owji) (Oct 8). No company has confirmed it	An official post from X, SpaceXAI or Cursor
Canvas	Rumor	A SpaceXAI staff post praising a canvas feature, cited in our Oct 9 issue, is now deleted. @bot's automated replies still mention a canvas, and one user says they've never seen one	A changelog line or help page

Open issues to watch#

Scheduled routines: still no all-clear from staff in either forum thread as of Saturday, 5 AM ET. The last staff word, on Oct 8, was that runs were "held back during a period of very high demand." Users split on Friday: still failing and better.
HTTPS-only outbound traffic: open since Oct 1 (our entry). Staff said on Oct 2 that it "isn't intended" and the team is tracking it, with no fix date. Eight more users said they were affected in the forum thread between Friday morning and early Saturday.
Email on team accounts: confirmed, and by design. For Cursor teams, "agent email is off by default," and a team admin turns it on under Bot Capabilities in the Cursor dashboard, per the help page. If an admin later turns it off, "email routines stop running." Watch for team users who can't claim an address.
Email routines rejected: unverified. One user says a routine with an email trigger was rejected as "Not a valid trigger." No staff reply yet.
Bot email in the changelog: the changelog still stops at 0.68.1, with no line for Bot email. The next release note should say whether it covers it.

Update, Oct 13: 0.70.2 (Oct 11) lists Bot email addresses.

This week on The Daily Bot#

The site launched on Oct 8 with daily issues. On Oct 9 we published 20 tips, 17 guides and 5 explainers, a ranked list of Top bots, 8 Grok Bot in the Workplace playbooks and a wishlist of 12 user requests. We made one public correction: our Oct 8 issue first said @bot tagging went live Monday; it was Tuesday.

In Friday's re-check we reviewed 56 evergreen pieces against the latest docs and changelog. Five got a Bot email update, including what a plugin is and what a routine is. The rest needed no changes, and none was retired. We also moved our @bot tagging entry from reported to confirmed after finding SpaceXAI's docs page for it. Top bots kept the same order. Dr eggbot's count of independent recommendations rose from 10 to 13.