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Just blogged about this here[0] but at least they're not doing the usual canned PR response surrounding this. Folks are already building on top of it: thedavi

by Sajarin 2mo ago

Just blogged about this here[0] but at least they're not doing the usual canned PR response surrounding this. Folks are already building on top of it: thedavidweng/gork-build[1] — rebrand grok→"gork", stripped vendor telemetry, opt-out-only data retention, blocks x.ai auto-update. A "VSCodium-style privacy fork." DigiGoon/digi-grok-build[2] — "dgrok" multi-provider CLI, builds from source instead of x.ai CDN. victor-software-house/open-grok[3] — "opened to every provider." LukaMucko/grok-build[4] — extra_body support for provider-specific request fields. RapidAI/grok-build-desktop[5] — Tauri desktop GUI client. mazdak/grok-build[6] — theming (Catppuccin). thomas9120/grok-build-archival[7] — Windows telemetry-disable script. saqoah/grok-build[8] — Kotlin MemoryBackend. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48928913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48928913 [1] https://github.com/thedavidweng/gork-build https://github.com/thedavidweng/gork-build [2] https://github.com/DigiGoon/digi-grok-build https://github.com/DigiGoon/digi-grok-build [3] https://github.com/victor-software-house/open-grok https://github.com/victor-software-house/open-grok [4] https://github.com/LukaMucko/grok-build https://github.com/LukaMucko/grok-build [5] https://github.com/RapidAI/grok-build-desktop https://github.com/RapidAI/grok-build-desktop [6] https://github.com/mazdak/grok-build https://github.com/mazdak/grok-build [7] https://github.com/thomas9120/grok-build-archival https://github.com/thomas9120/grok-build-archival [8] https://github.com/saqoah/grok-build https://github.com/saqoah/grok-build

colesantiago 2mo ago
These are all pointless forks, they will die in a year. Bookmark this and check back.
- xgulfie 2mo ago
  Honestly. Some LLM enthusiasts throwing an agent at making a fork doesn't mean anyone is invested in this
  - rynn 2mo ago
    That doesn’t mean they won’t be, or that the forks won’t be good.
    - conorcleary 2mo ago
      all those youtube videos people upload nowadays aren't worth it, we already have keyboardcat (^ basically telling ppl creativity is done with, don't bother)
      - qlte 2mo ago
        The parent comment is just pointing out that LLM written forks pushed out within hours of a “buzzy” repo release on GitHub are a pretty useless signal for gauging actual adoption/interest. Which is, IMO, accurate based on the state of the AI dev space in 2026. Stars/forks drafting off the hype from a well known name are constantly gamed for eyeballs/personal brand-building courtesy of free advertising via the Github UI when the only cost is a few sentence prompt and some tokens.
        conorcleary 2mo ago
        I forgot the /s ;-)
- OsrsNeedsf2P 2mo ago
  While I'm sure most of them will die, there will certainly be 1 or 2 that the community rallies behind
  - seanclayton 2mo ago
    Why when they can just fork it and improve it on their own with AI?
    - Barbing 2mo ago
      Subsidized tokens aren’t forever & local models might not compete with an entire team of volunteers, I’d guess.
      - mirekrusin 2mo ago
        Unsubsidised token prices that people would actually pay for is a fantasy.
      - jfoster 2mo ago
        I've been contemplating that recently. You're of course correct that subsidized tokens won't be forever, but that might only be half the story, since there's two opposing forces in action: 1. Phasing out of subsidized tokens. 2. Token prices being brought down through scaling, better hardware, etc. It's possible that these might balance each other out sufficiently that token customers won't notice any substantial increase in price.
      - seanclayton 2mo ago
        > local models might That was yesterday's "LLMs might". Time passes. Nothing stays the same. "Local models might" X Y or Z today has no influence on the limitations of tomorrow's local models except to remove them. Yesterday's LLMs are the exact same thing, except your computer is connected to their local model for you to use. Disc drives used to be measured in megabytes—now in terabytes. Technically useful tend to get more optimized with time, not less.
      - xboxnolifes 2mo ago
- giancarlostoro 2mo ago
  Or maybe Grok Build will implement some of these changes and render them obsolete.
mook 2mo ago
Nice, [3] reminded me of OpenGrok † the old Sun project that was basically LXR on steroids. † https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/ https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/
thedavidweng 2mo ago
Thank you Sajarin mentioning my Gork-Build fork, I wanted to address some of the comments. I agree that many of the responses in the comments are valid. It is a harsh reality that 80% of projects like this fail to gain traction and eventually fade away. However, I believe the significance of such a fork lies more in its existence as a statement. Regarding xAI, even if their current release of Grok has telemetry disabled by default, Zero Data Retention remains a feature exclusive to enterprise users rather than individuals. And Whole-repo research packaging is still controlled by their server-side settings; it isn't an option you can toggle within the software itself. I am currently implementing more fences to prevent unnecessary data from being uploaded, in terms of long-term maintenance, one person certainly cannot build something on the scale of VSCodium, but I have drawn a lot of inspiration from that project. In the future, I want to automate Gork-Build further by turning these privacy protections and guardrails into patches. These could then be applied to new upstream Grok-Buil versions as they are released. As for whether this project can become a daily driver for everyone, I don't think that is the primary concern. If you need a open source coding agent, you should definitely use Pi or OpenCode, there is absolute no necessity to use Grok-Build for non xAI models in the first place. But again I think its existence is vital. People need companies that demonstrate a truly open attitude and coding agents that are genuinely friendly to the open-source community, and while xAI's decision to open-source Grok-build was a great move, it isn't a community-maintained or community-built project. It remains a public snapshot of their internal monorepo, and they have disabled issues and pull requests. This is precisely why a fork like https://github.com/thedavidweng/gork-build https://github.com/thedavidweng/gork-build needs to exist.

by Sajarin 2mo ago

colesantiago 2mo ago

These are all pointless forks, they will die in a year. Bookmark this and check back.

xgulfie 2mo ago
Honestly. Some LLM enthusiasts throwing an agent at making a fork doesn't mean anyone is invested in this
- rynn 2mo ago
  That doesn’t mean they won’t be, or that the forks won’t be good.
  - conorcleary 2mo ago
    all those youtube videos people upload nowadays aren't worth it, we already have keyboardcat (^ basically telling ppl creativity is done with, don't bother)
    - qlte 2mo ago
      The parent comment is just pointing out that LLM written forks pushed out within hours of a “buzzy” repo release on GitHub are a pretty useless signal for gauging actual adoption/interest. Which is, IMO, accurate based on the state of the AI dev space in 2026. Stars/forks drafting off the hype from a well known name are constantly gamed for eyeballs/personal brand-building courtesy of free advertising via the Github UI when the only cost is a few sentence prompt and some tokens.
      - conorcleary 2mo ago
        I forgot the /s ;-)
OsrsNeedsf2P 2mo ago
While I'm sure most of them will die, there will certainly be 1 or 2 that the community rallies behind
- seanclayton 2mo ago
  Why when they can just fork it and improve it on their own with AI?
  - Barbing 2mo ago
    Subsidized tokens aren’t forever & local models might not compete with an entire team of volunteers, I’d guess.
    - mirekrusin 2mo ago
      Unsubsidised token prices that people would actually pay for is a fantasy.
    - jfoster 2mo ago
      I've been contemplating that recently. You're of course correct that subsidized tokens won't be forever, but that might only be half the story, since there's two opposing forces in action: 1. Phasing out of subsidized tokens. 2. Token prices being brought down through scaling, better hardware, etc. It's possible that these might balance each other out sufficiently that token customers won't notice any substantial increase in price.
    - seanclayton 2mo ago
      > local models might That was yesterday's "LLMs might". Time passes. Nothing stays the same. "Local models might" X Y or Z today has no influence on the limitations of tomorrow's local models except to remove them. Yesterday's LLMs are the exact same thing, except your computer is connected to their local model for you to use. Disc drives used to be measured in megabytes—now in terabytes. Technically useful tend to get more optimized with time, not less.
    - xboxnolifes 2mo ago
giancarlostoro 2mo ago
Or maybe Grok Build will implement some of these changes and render them obsolete.

mook 2mo ago

Nice, [3] reminded me of OpenGrok † the old Sun project that was basically LXR on steroids. † https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/ https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/

thedavidweng 2mo ago

Thank you Sajarin mentioning my Gork-Build fork, I wanted to address some of the comments. I agree that many of the responses in the comments are valid. It is a harsh reality that 80% of projects like this fail to gain traction and eventually fade away. However, I believe the significance of such a fork lies more in its existence as a statement. Regarding xAI, even if their current release of Grok has telemetry disabled by default, Zero Data Retention remains a feature exclusive to enterprise users rather than individuals. And Whole-repo research packaging is still controlled by their server-side settings; it isn't an option you can toggle within the software itself. I am currently implementing more fences to prevent unnecessary data from being uploaded, in terms of long-term maintenance, one person certainly cannot build something on the scale of VSCodium, but I have drawn a lot of inspiration from that project. In the future, I want to automate Gork-Build further by turning these privacy protections and guardrails into patches. These could then be applied to new upstream Grok-Buil versions as they are released. As for whether this project can become a daily driver for everyone, I don't think that is the primary concern. If you need a open source coding agent, you should definitely use Pi or OpenCode, there is absolute no necessity to use Grok-Build for non xAI models in the first place. But again I think its existence is vital. People need companies that demonstrate a truly open attitude and coding agents that are genuinely friendly to the open-source community, and while xAI's decision to open-source Grok-build was a great move, it isn't a community-maintained or community-built project. It remains a public snapshot of their internal monorepo, and they have disabled issues and pull requests. This is precisely why a fork like https://github.com/thedavidweng/gork-build https://github.com/thedavidweng/gork-build needs to exist.