Using OpenLore with Grok Bot

Grok Bot is xAI’s persistent agent. Each Bot you create works from a shared cloud computer, keeps memory and files between conversations, and reaches tools through plugins that are installed once for your whole account. A custom MCP server is one of those plugins, so this guide shows how to connect Grok Bot to your team’s knowledge in OpenLore. Every Bot on your account then searches and reads the same files as every other agent you connect, with the same restricted shell commands.

Before you start: a server your Bot can reach

Grok Bot calls MCP servers from xAI’s cloud, not from your laptop, and rejects localhost and private-network addresses. Deploy OpenLore where it has a public HTTPS address, with a token required on /mcp and the OAuth issuer set to that address, which is what Grok Bot’s sign-in needs. The Production checklist walks through all three; the quickest route is a host such as Render or Fly.io that gives the service HTTPS out of the box, and HTTPS in Configure the server covers a machine of your own. Register a passkey for your identity as the checklist describes; you use it to approve the plugin. This guide uses https://lore.example.com as the server’s address throughout; substitute yours.

Check that the MCP endpoint is up and asking for a credential:

curl -si -X POST https://lore.example.com/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-03-26","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"curl","version":"0"}}}'

The response is 401 Unauthorized with a WWW-Authenticate header pointing at /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource. That header is how Grok Bot discovers OpenLore’s OAuth endpoints.

Connect your Bot

Plugins are installed from the app, not from inside a Bot’s conversation, and an installed plugin is available to every Bot on your account.

1. Open Connect apps from the sidebar, then Your plugins, and add a custom MCP server. The form takes a name, a URL and optional headers.
2. Name it openlore and enter https://lore.example.com/mcp as the URL. Leave the headers empty: the server uses OAuth, so there is no key to paste.
3. Save it, then choose Authenticate on the new plugin. Grok Bot opens OpenLore’s sign-in page in your browser; approve it with your passkey. The OAuth token stays on xAI’s connector backend, and your Bots call tools without ever holding it.
4. Back in Connect apps → Your plugins → Manage plugins and skills, check that openlore is listed under Installed.

If you cannot find the form, ask a Bot to add the server for you with the same name and URL; it uses the same mechanism and the plugin lands in the same list.

Now open a conversation with a Bot, type @, pick openlore, and ask:

Use the openlore plugin's shell tool to run `tree -L 2 /` and show me the
output.

Then ask something your docs answer, such as “use the openlore plugin to find what the knowledge repository says about our retry policy”. It should search with grep -r through the lore_bash tool and answer from the result.

Tell your Bot when to use it

A Bot keeps memory, and skills are a library shared by all your Bots, so you tell it once. Every OpenLore server prints a ready-made instructions section with the agents command; ask a Bot to turn it into a skill:

Run `agents` through the openlore plugin's shell tool. Save its "When to use
it", "Layout" and "Useful Commands" sections as a skill called "openlore",
with every command run through the openlore plugin rather than over SSH.
Search the knowledge repository before guessing or asking me about project
docs, runbooks or past decisions.

The skill now appears when you type / in the composer, and any Bot can use it. The section tells the Bot when to search the knowledge repository and which commands to use. See Any agent over SSH for the other instruction formats.

If a Bot should check the knowledge repository on a schedule, for example to summarise what changed under /channel/general each morning, ask the Bot that should own the job to create a routine and use Test run before enabling it.

Limit what your Bot can see

Grok Bot signs in as you, so your Bots can never see more than your identity sees. OpenLore records the client as a delegated identity named after the client and the domain it signs in from, such as grok-bot@x.ai, with you as the principal, and write history shows the pair as principal/actor.

To keep your Bots below your own access, cap the delegate. The Authorize page you approve with your passkey lists every docset and capability your identity holds, each with a checkbox; untick drafts before you select Authorize and the plugin cannot reach that docset through you. To change this later, open the server in a browser, choose Permission settings from the identity menu, and edit the delegate’s docsets and capabilities, or disconnect it. Both routes store the result as deny_docsets and deny_capabilities on the delegate entry in lore.json.

Ask a Bot to run lore docsets; drafts is absent from the list. Because plugins are account-wide, the cap applies to every Bot you run. Reads are attributed in the dashboard, so you can see which files your Bots open and which they never touch. See Auth for roles, grants and delegates.

What your Bot can do

Your Bots reach OpenLore through the lore_bash tool, which runs OpenLore’s restricted shell over the virtual filesystem, not the terminal on the Bot’s cloud computer or a shell on yours: ls, cat, grep, find, head, tail and pipes work, and nothing can execute on the host. Writes are only possible when the server runs with readonly: false and the identity has an rw or publish grant; keep the default readonly: true until a Bot has a reason to publish, and put write actions behind an approval rule in the Bot’s instructions when you turn it on. See Writing and Publishing.

If you also use another agent, connect it to the same server. Every agent then reads the same files, and an update made once is visible to all of them on their next read.