TL;DR

  • Wiring Grok Bot straight into your GitHub, Gmail, or Slack account hands it one broad, all-or-nothing credential. You get no clear record of what it did and no easy way to switch off that connection.
  • Arcade sits between Grok Bot and your real accounts: each connection is scoped to only the tools it needs and can be revoked on its own.
  • Pair that with Grok Bot’s own Require Approval rules, and it works unsupervised on the safe stuff and stops to ask before anything you can’t easily undo.
  • The two walkthroughs below cover the whole setup through one Arcade Gateway, including the exact prompts for a multi-day “wait, then follow up” email routine and an overnight research routine.

What is Grok Bot and how does it work?

Grok Bot is xAI’s persistent AI agent. Each Bot gets its own cloud computer, signs into whatever tools you allow, and works a job end to end. It comes back only when it needs a decision from you.

One setup detail matters here: Grok Bot signs in with a Cursor account, and Grok Bot follows Cursor’s MCP authentication and team policy. That’s why the authentication choices later in this guide reference Cursor by name. It is the system handling the MCP connection, not a typo.

Grok Bot keeps persistent memory across sessions, runs several Bots in parallel, offers “Teach a Task” (the Bot watches a workflow once and saves it), and maintains a tool layer supporting both built-in connectors and external MCP servers. That is where Arcade comes in.

Why route Grok Bot through Arcade?

Three things matter before a Bot runs unattended.

Identity. If Grok Bot sends an email or comments on a GitHub issue, that should trace to one specific, revocable connection rather than an all-purpose credential buried in a config.

Least privilege. A Bot that only needs to read a thread and send a follow-up doesn’t need your full Gmail account’s permissions. Scoping each connection down limits the damage from a bad instruction, a bug, or a prompt injection on a page the Bot browses.

A record of what happened. Grok Bot works while you’re not watching, so you want one place to see exactly what it did instead of reconstructing the trail from your Sent folder.

Arcade sits between Grok Bot and your accounts, so each connection stays scoped and every call gets logged.

A credential plugged in directly Routed through Arcade
Access One broad credential, same as your full account Scoped to only the tools you allow, per connection
If something looks wrong Hard to tell which action did what The log shows exactly which call ran, with what, and when
Turning it off Usually means rotating your real password or token Revoke that one connection

What are the limits of scoping on Grok Bot’s shared computer?

Scoping a connection doesn’t create a security boundary between Bots on the same account. Every Bot you run shares one cloud computer, including its files, browser sessions, and terminal credentials. In principle, any Bot on that account can reach those resources, which is why xAI itself warns against treating separate Bots as separate security boundaries. Arcade’s scoping limits what a Bot can do through the Gateway connection you gave it, but it doesn’t wall the Bot off from whatever else lives on the shared machine. Avoid giving a low-trust Bot the same account as one wired into anything sensitive.

The same applies at a handoff between Bots: effective authority should be the intersection of what an agent can do and what the person triggering it can do, never the union.

How do you connect Grok Bot to Arcade?

This is a dashboard setup on Arcade’s side and a local Grok MCP setup on your machine. You do not run an Arcade server yourself; Arcade hosts the Gateway:

Arcade MCP Gateway -> local grok mcp add -> Grok Bot desktop connector card -> OAuth authorization

Step 1: Create an Arcade Gateway and choose authentication

Sign up at arcade.dev, open MCP Gateways, click Create Gateway, and pick the toolkits Grok Bot needs. Use Gmail for the walkthroughs below, plus Google Docs or Drive if you also want the overnight-research routine. Restrict the Gateway to an allow-list inside each toolkit, such as read and send tools without full inbox administration. This is the least-privilege step, done once in the UI.

For Grok Bot, choose Members of this Project (Arcade Auth). That lets Grok complete a browser-based OAuth flow for the Gateway instead of requiring you to paste static request headers into the Bot.

The main authentication options are:

Option What it means Recommendation
Arcade Auth / User Source Grok Bot completes a browser-based OAuth consent screen; the MCP client stores the authorization and refreshes it when needed Preferred for Grok Bot. No long-lived API key pasted into the Bot, and the connection can renew itself
Arcade Headers A static Arcade API key and user ID are sent as headers on every request Useful for Cursor and other MCP clients that expose static headers; not the easiest path for Grok Bot’s current UI
Manually pasted OAuth access token You copy a short-lived access token into an Authorization header by hand Avoid. Access tokens expire, and a manually pasted one won’t refresh itself. The connection quietly breaks

OAuth is not a forever credential, but it also should not require reauthorization on every run. You may need to sign in again if you revoke access, scopes change, token refresh fails, the connector is reset, or your organization’s security policy expires the grant.

Whichever mode you pick, the Gateway ends up at one URL regardless of how many toolkits you add behind it later:

https://api.arcade.dev/mcp/<your-gateway-slug>

Step 2: Add the Gateway from your local terminal

Install or open the Grok CLI/TUI on your own computer, then run this in your local terminal:

grok mcp add --transport http arcade-gateway https://api.arcade.dev/mcp/<your-gateway-slug>
grok mcp doctor arcade-gateway

Do not run this command inside the Grok Bot cloud computer terminal.

The MCP server needs to be added from your local shell, where the Grok CLI is installed. Adding the Gateway locally also makes it available to Grok Bot desktop.

Step 3: Authorize the Gateway in Grok Bot desktop

Open Grok Bot desktop signed in with the account. The Gateway will appear in the plugin marketplace. Click and complete the Arcade OAuth authorization flow. After authorization, ask:

List the tools available from arcade-gateway.

If it still shows 0 tools, check the Arcade Gateway’s allowed toolkits, Gateway auth mode, project membership, and any Cursor team MCP allowlist.

Step 4: Authorize each service the first time it is used

The first time Grok Bot calls a Gmail, Docs, or Drive tool through Arcade, you get the normal provider consent screen, such as “Sign in with Google.” Approve it once; Arcade stores and refreshes that provider token for your user. You never paste a Google credential into Grok Bot itself.

Step 5: Test the connection before trusting it

Start read-only:

Using arcade-gateway, list the subject lines of my five most recent unread emails. Do not send, archive, label, move, or delete anything.

Check Arcade’s Tool Executions log to confirm the read ran under the account you expect.

Then add narrow Require Approval rules in Grok Bot:

Require approval before sending any email to an address other than my own.
Require approval before sharing a document with anyone else.
Require approval before deleting, archiving, labeling, or moving email.

Ask Grok Bot to draft, not send, a one-line test email. Confirm the send appears as a proposed action instead of firing automatically, approve it deliberately, and check the log again. Once both checks pass, you’re ready for real workflows.

Which Grok Bot workflows should you build first?

Grok Bot builds automation from two pieces: a skill (reusable instructions for a task) and a routine (tells one Bot when to run it, on a schedule or on demand). Neither has a settings form; you describe the job in plain language, in the same conversation where you’ve been testing the Gateway, and the Bot turns it into a scheduled run. The clearer you are about the schedule, the input, the stop condition, and the approval boundary in that one message, the less back-and-forth later.

Workflow 1: Wait, then follow up

You email someone important, and the only thing that matters next is whether they reply. Watching for that isn’t something you leave a browser tab open for over a weekend. Grok Bot can handle it because a routine runs as a scheduled job on its own cloud computer, laptop or no laptop.

Message the Bot that owns your Gmail connector with the schedule, the thread, the stop condition, and the approval boundary all in one go:

“Every day at 9:00 AM Eastern, check the Gmail thread with [person] about [topic] through arcade-gateway. If there’s no reply after 3 business days from when I sent it, draft a short follow-up here for my approval. Do not send it. If a reply has arrived, report it here and stop the routine. If the connector can’t reach Gmail, tell me that instead of assuming there’s no reply.”

Grok Bot creates the routine and shows its next scheduled run. Before you walk away, run Test run once yourself. Point it at a thread you don’t mind checking twice, then confirm it read the right thread, stopped at a draft, and would flag a connection failure rather than read it as silence.

Checking the thread is a read, so it runs free, once a day, for as long as it takes. Only if three days pass with no reply does the Bot reach the consequential step of drafting a follow-up, and your Require Approval rule gates the actual send. If they reply on day two instead, the routine reports back and stops on its own; nothing drafted, nothing sent. Because this runs through your Gateway, you can open Arcade’s log afterward and see exactly which days it checked and what, if anything, went out.

Once the thread resolves, delete the routine because a finished watch routine keeps checking a dead thread and burning usage. Open the Bot, go to View conversation details → Routines, and remove it there; the same screen lets you pause or edit any routine without recreating it.

Workflow 2: Run overnight research

You want a competitor, lead, or topic properly researched, but doing it live eats an evening. Grok Bot can spend the night on it while your laptop is off, reading, cross-checking, and writing up findings.

Run it once as an ordinary task first:

“Research [Company/Topic]: recent news, pricing or product changes, and how they’re positioning themselves. Write it up in a new Google Doc as you go, and email me a short summary with a link to the Doc when you’re done. Flag any claim that only has one source.”

Once you like the result, save it as a skill so you’re not retyping the instructions every time:

“Save the process we just used as a skill called ‘Competitor research brief.’ Include the source types to check, the Doc structure, and the rule that the summary email only ever goes to me.”

Then schedule it:

“Every night at 11:00 PM Pacific, run the Competitor research brief skill on [Company/Topic]. Email me the summary by 7:00 AM. Don’t share the Doc with anyone, and if you won’t finish in time, send what you have and say what’s missing.”

Add Google Docs or Drive tools to the same Gateway, scoped to document actions rather than full Drive administration. The routine now writes to two separately scoped tool groups: the Doc and the summary email.

This one may not need an approval gate if the Doc stays private and the summary goes only to you. The moment you ask the Bot to share that Doc with someone else, or send the summary to a team instead, a Require Approval rule should catch it. Run Test run once before you trust the 11 PM slot, on a topic you don’t mind researching twice.

Check View conversation details → Routines the next morning to see whether it ran on schedule.

What should you check before running Grok Bot unattended?

  • Scope each connection to what the task needs. A narrower allow-list is a smaller blast radius if a Bot misreads an instruction, or a page it’s browsing tries something it shouldn’t.
  • Put a Require Approval rule on anything you can’t easily undo, such as sending mail, posting publicly, or spending money. Grok Bot’s own Stripe Link integration follows the same idea: every purchase needs approval and gets a single-use card, not a stored payment method.
  • Prefer a structured connector over a Bot-driven browser, wherever one exists. Pages can change, block automation, or throw a CAPTCHA. A page is also where a prompt injection would try to reach the Bot.
  • Check the audit log after the first few unattended runs, not just when something looks wrong.
  • Know how to revoke one connection without resetting everything. Each toolkit’s authorization in Arcade is separate, so you can turn off the one you’re unsure about.

Set up Grok Bot safely with Arcade

Grok Bot’s whole appeal is that it keeps working after you close your laptop. That is exactly why its access deserves more care than a bare API key pasted into a connector field. Route it through Arcade, scope each connection to what the job needs, and let Require Approval rules catch anything you can’t easily undo. The result: an agent that runs unattended on the safe stuff and checks in before anything that matters.

Sign up at arcade.dev, create your first Gateway, and connect it to Grok Bot. The “wait, then follow up” routine is a low-stakes place to start.

Frequently asked questions about Grok Bot and Arcade

Do I need to give Grok Bot my Google password?

No. The first tool call triggers a normal OAuth consent screen scoped to whatever the Gateway exposes. Grok Bot never sees the credential, and you can revoke the connection later without touching your account password.

Can I stop Grok Bot from sending email without my approval?

Yes, through Require Approval rules (Settings → General → Auto Review). A rule like “require approval before sending any external email” stops the action and shows you what it’s about to do until you approve or deny it.

How do I give Grok Bot narrow access instead of full account access?

Restrict the Gateway to an allow-list of tools inside each toolkit when you set it up. Grok Bot never sees the tools you didn’t include.

How can I see what Grok Bot did while I was not watching?

Arcade logs every tool call made through the Gateway, including which tool ran, what inputs it used, which account it used, and when it ran.

How do I get started with Grok Bot and Arcade?

Sign up at arcade.dev, create your first Gateway, and connect it to Grok Bot. The “wait, then follow up” routine is a reasonable first build because it is low-stakes, has an obvious read/write split, and gives you a fast way to get a feel for Require Approval rules.