claudetools/.claude/skills/grok/SKILL.md

name, description

name

description

grok

Route a task to the Grok CLI (xAI Grok 4.3) for capabilities Claude lacks or for an independent second model. Use for: IMAGE generation/editing, VIDEO generation (image->video), live WEB + X/TWITTER search (current/real-time data past Claude's cutoff), and adversarial second-opinion VERIFICATION or drafts. Invoke on: "ask grok", "grok image", "generate/make an image", "make a video / animate this", "grok verify / second opinion from grok", "search X / twitter", "what's the latest <current-event/version>". Grok is a capability EXTENSION (image/video/live-data), not a replacement for Claude's own coding/editing.

Grok capability router

Claude shells out to the locally-installed Grok CLI (grok.exe, xAI Grok 4.3) for things Claude can't do natively, or for a genuinely independent second model. Verified working on this machine (2026-06-04): image gen, image->video, live web/X search, text reasoning.

Auth: Grok uses its own OIDC login (~/.grok/auth.json, grok.com, ~6h refresh) — no API key. If calls fail with auth errors, the user runs grok login.

The wrapper

bash "$CLAUDETOOLS_ROOT/.claude/skills/grok/scripts/ask-grok.sh" <mode> ...

Mode	Usage	What it does
text	ask-grok.sh text "<prompt>" or text --prompt-file <path>	One-shot text answer (independent model). --prompt-file for long content (review/summarize a doc).
verify	ask-grok.sh verify "<claim/finding>" or verify --prompt-file <path>	Adversarial second opinion — Grok tries to REFUTE/find gaps, returns a verdict + reasons.
review	ask-grok.sh review <file-path> ["<instructions>"]	Grok reads the file at <path> itself (its read_file tool, run in the repo) and reviews it — no embedding, handles large files, can pull in referenced files.
image	ask-grok.sh image "<prompt>" [out.png]	image_gen (Imagine) → copies the artifact to out (default grok-image.png).
video	ask-grok.sh video "<motion prompt>" <input-image> [out.mp4]	image_to_video on an input image → copies to out. ~60-90s.
xsearch	ask-grok.sh xsearch "<query>"	Live web_search + X/Twitter tools; returns text with citations.
raw	ask-grok.sh raw <grok args...>	Escape hatch — passes args straight to grok.

The script captures JSON (--output-format json), parses the result, and for media retrieves the artifact by sessionId from ~/.grok/sessions/<enc-cwd>/<sessionId>/{images,videos}/ — so artifacts are recovered even when a headless run reports stopReason: Cancelled before echoing the path (a known finalization quirk of the -p mode).

Machine availability (fleet)

Grok is per-machine — the skill syncs fleet-wide but the binary does not. Availability is gated by identity.json (per-machine, gitignored):

"grok": { "installed": true, "binary": "C:/Users/guru/.grok/bin/grok.exe",
          "auth": "oidc", "is_fleet_host": true,
          "capabilities": ["text","verify","image","video","xsearch"] }

• If grok.installed is false (or the block is absent), ask-grok.sh exits 3 with routing guidance instead of failing obscurely. Claude on such a machine should NOT attempt local Grok.
• Current fleet Grok host: GURU-5070 — the only machine with Grok installed right now. When others get it, set their identity.json grok block (and update this line).

Remote routing (NOT yet wired): a non-host machine cannot run Grok locally. To fulfill a Grok request from elsewhere, route it to the host (GURU-5070). Candidate channels: GuruRMM agent command execution (/rmm — GURU-5070 is enrolled; the hard part is shipping image/video artifacts back), grok agent serve (WebSocket relay), or a coord-API job queue. Until that's built, Grok requests originate on the host machine.

When to route to Grok

• Image / video creation or editing — Claude can't generate media; Grok can. (image, video)
• Current / real-time facts — anything past Claude's knowledge cutoff, breaking news, latest versions, or X/Twitter sentiment. (xsearch)
• Independent verification — a genuinely different vendor/model to red-team a Claude finding or design before acting on it. (verify)
• Diverse drafts / second opinion — alternative phrasing or approach to compare. (text)

When NOT to

• Pure classify/extract/summarize → cheaper via Tier-0 Ollama (.claude/OLLAMA.md).
• Editing this repo's code → Claude's own agents (the Grok CLI can read .claude/ and run tools, but Claude owns the codebase work).
• Never delegate unsupervised destructive / production actions to Grok. The earlier SBS post-mortem (docs/session-notes/2026-06-03-claude-postmortem-grok-mspbackups-sbs.md) showed Grok over-claims and under-verifies — always review Grok output before acting on it, and confirm media is what was asked for (Claude can view images).

Safety / operational notes

• ~/.grok/config.toml defaults to permission_mode = "always-approve" (auto-runs tools). The wrapper overrides with --permission-mode dontAsk and --no-subagents; do not bypass that.
• Prompts are passed via --prompt-file only (inline args break on shell quoting).
• grok-build rejects --effort/--reasoning-effort (400) — don't pass them.
• Models available: grok-build (default), grok-composer-2.5-fast. The agent self-reports as Grok 4.3.
• After media gen, Claude should view the image (Read tool) to confirm correctness; videos can be confirmed by header/ffprobe.

Reference

• Binary: ~/.grok/bin/grok.exe (not on PATH; the wrapper auto-locates it or honors GROK=).
• Full capability investigation + verification: see the 2026-06-04 session log.
• Grok native tools observed: image_gen, image_edit, image_to_video, reference_to_video, web_search, web_fetch, x_keyword_search, x_semantic_search, x_user_search, x_thread_fetch, run_terminal_command, file ops, scheduler_*, monitor, memory.