The argument in one line.
A coding agent's plan-first workflow reduces project drift more reliably than a user's discipline does, and that structural advantage compounds with pricing and company solvency into a real switching argument.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You already use Claude Code or ChatGPT Codex daily and want to know what a terminal-based competitor is doing differently before dismissing it.
- You're picking a primary AI coding tool and care about total monthly cost across coding, image, and video generation.
- You want a concrete example of how a plan-approval step changes agent behavior on a real build.
SKIP IF…
- You need a graphical IDE experience — this tool is terminal-only right now.
- You're looking for a rigorous, benchmark-based comparison rather than one engineer's opinion and a single 2-minute demo.
The full version, fast.
The presenter argues Grok Build, xAI's terminal coding agent, beats Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex for three reasons: it builds a reviewable plan before writing any code and keeps returning to that plan, which limits the scope drift he sees in the other two tools; xAI/SpaceX generates real cash rather than depending entirely on continued investor funding, which he frames as a business-continuity risk for OpenAI and Anthropic; and the $20/month subscription bundles the coding agent with image generation, video generation, and a verified social account, undercutting Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex on price. He demonstrates the plan-then-build flow by having Grok Build draft, revise, and execute a plan for a Kanban-style task board, which it builds — including drag-and-drop — in two minutes and thirty-eight seconds using the faster Composer 2.5 model.
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00:00 – 01:22
01 · Why Grok Build is blowing my mind
Cold open establishing the presenter's credibility (full-stack engineer, uses all three tools) and framing the video's claim.
01:22 – 02:57
02 · What Grok Build actually is
Grok Build is xAI's terminal coding agent; explains it can read/edit files like competitors but is built natively around a plan-first workflow.
02:57 – 04:54
03 · Grok Build vs Composer 2.5
Clears up the naming confusion: Composer 2.5 is a fast secondary model inside Grok Build, not the Cursor IDE.
04:54 – 06:08
04 · Reason 1: drift
Argues Grok Build drifts less than Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex because it constantly re-anchors to the approved plan.
06:08 – 09:45
05 · Reason 2: the team and company behind it
Argues xAI/SpaceX's cash generation and Elon Musk's track record make Grok Build a safer long-term bet than OpenAI or Anthropic, both of which he frames as dependent on continued investor funding; also raises trust concerns about Sam Altman and Dario Amodei.
09:45 – 10:44
06 · Reason 3: $20/month value
Breaks down what the $20/month Grok subscription includes: Grok Build, image generation, Grok Imagine video generation, and a verified X account.
10:44 – 11:11
07 · How to install it
Shows the one-line install command from grok.com and setting up a project folder.
11:11 – 14:50
08 · Feature tour and building a plan
Screen-recorded terminal tour: resume session, slash commands, themes, then a live plan-mode walkthrough for a demo Kanban app, including a mid-plan revision.
14:50 – 16:12
09 · Live demo: app built in 2:38
Composer 2.5 fast model builds a working drag-and-drop Kanban board from the approved plan in 2 minutes 38 seconds, timed on screen.
16:12 – 17:48
10 · Why I'm betting on Grok Build
Closing speculation that Grok Build's token usage is currently subsidized while xAI grows its user base, plus a nod to the recent Cursor acquisition and a sign-off.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Grok Build treats planning as a required first step rather than an optional habit, so the agent keeps checking its own plan instead of drifting toward unrelated changes.
- A coding agent that returns to an explicit plan on every step produces less scope drift than one that relies on the user to keep re-stating the goal.
- Composer 2.5 is a separate, faster model available inside Grok Build for quick tasks, while Grok Build itself is positioned for larger, longer-running work.
- Composer 2.5 is not related to the Cursor IDE despite the shared branding — the confusion comes from Cursor's parent company striking a deal to surface a fast model under a similar name.
- A $20/month Grok subscription bundles a coding agent, image generation, video generation, and a verified social account, compared to Claude Code plans that commonly run $100+/month for comparable usage.
- A coding tool backed by a company with independent revenue is a lower continuity risk than one that depends on continuous investor funding to keep operating.
- Watching an agent build a drag-and-drop task board from an approved plan in under three minutes shows how much a plan-first workflow can compress build time on small, well-scoped apps.
- A model that responds unusually fast can itself trigger user skepticism about whether the work was actually completed, independent of whether the output is correct.
A plan-first workflow beats relying on user discipline
WHAT TO LEARN
The video's real argument isn't Grok versus Claude versus Codex — it's that forcing an explicit, reviewable plan before any execution reduces drift more reliably than trusting the user to keep re-stating the goal.
- An agent that must produce and get approval on a plan before writing code stays anchored to the original goal longer than one that starts executing immediately.
- Vendor durability is a real variable in tool selection: a company with independent revenue is a lower continuity risk than one dependent entirely on continued outside funding.
- Bundled pricing changes the total cost comparison — evaluate a subscription by everything it replaces (coding, image generation, video generation), not just the headline coding feature.
- A visibly fast agent response can trigger doubt about correctness purely because of the speed, independent of whether the output is actually right — verify before assuming failure.
- When two products share similar branding (like 'Composer' appearing in both Cursor and Grok Build), don't assume shared ownership or functionality without checking directly.
Terms worth knowing.
- Grok Build
- xAI's terminal-based coding agent that can read, edit, and create files in a project directory, built around an explicit plan-first workflow.
- Composer 2.5
- A fast-response model available inside Grok Build for quick, smaller tasks, distinct from the larger Grok Build model used for bigger builds.
- Plan mode
- A workflow step where the agent produces an editable project plan (goals, tech stack, features, structure) for the user to approve or revise before any code is written.
- Drift
- When an AI coding agent gradually works on something other than the originally intended task because it isn't anchored back to a stated goal or plan.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
10:01
“For $20, you can't beat it. It's almost impossible to use Cloud Code without paying at least a $100 a month.”
15:00
“It made a drag and drop app in two minutes and thirty eight seconds, you guys.”
05:47
“Grok has the plan built into its DNA, so it's always going back to that plan and trying to build what you guys agreed you were actually gonna build.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
analogystory
00:00I'm a full stack software engineer, and vibe coding has changed my life. Not because I've got lazy, but because I no longer have to spend my time doing stupid things like looking for missing curly brackets.
00:12I can just stay in the flow and be creative as I want. There's lots of tools on the market that you can use for vibe coding, but the one that's absolutely blowing my mind right now is Grok Build. Most of you aren't using Grok Build yet, but I can tell you it is absolutely crushing Chad GPT Codecs and Claude Co.
00:32Before that you think that I'm just making rage bait content for clicks, let me say that Claude Co and Chad GPT Codecs are awesome. I use both of them.
00:40But right now, Grok Build is the one that you should be using and there's three reasons why and I'm gonna tell you in this video. But before we get into that, there's one more thing that is confusing everybody and that's the difference between Grok Build and composer 2.5 and we're gonna explain exactly what that is so you know what you're using.
00:58By the end of the video, I'm gonna show you how to install Grok. We'll do a quick demo of some of the features and you can start using it on your own project. And if any of this sounds useful, please help me out and smash the like button below.
01:11It tells YouTube to show this to more people that are trying to learn about vibe coding. And go ahead and subscribe if you wanna learn from an actual software engineer, not just some influencer that's reading a script that Claude made for him.
01:22Let's talk about what Grok Build is. Grok Build is x AI's coding agent.
01:28Some of you may remember x AI as being called Twitter. It's part of that whole company, SpaceX.
01:35They're all intertwined with Elon Musk. As of right now, the only way to really use Grok Build is through the terminal. And I get it.
01:43I think that the terminal is stupid. I hate using the terminal. We developed graphical user interfaces thirty years ago.
01:49There's really no reason to be using the terminal, but it works. And for Grok, it works pretty well.
01:55And I'm pretty confident with the recent acquisition of Cursor, we're probably gonna have a full graphical user interface to work with Grok pretty soon this year anyway. Okay.
02:04So Grok Build can work through the terminal. It can update your files. It can edit files.
02:08It can do all that stuff. And that's basically table stakes right now. Gemini can do it.
02:13Claude can do it. Chagibati Codex can do it. Everyone can work with files on your computer.
02:18But the area where Grok really excels is in the plan. It's built into the DNA to start a project by creating a plan, editing the plan, going back and forth and refining the plan.
02:29And then from that plan, that's what we build. Any of the other tools that I mentioned like ChatGPT Codex or Claude can do plans. It's on you, the user, to remember and to actually create a plan.
02:41And Grok can work without a plan but it's just more built natively to work from a plan than Chad GPZ Codecs or Claude Codecs is.
02:51And that's just gonna give you a lot better results. You're not gonna have nearly as much drift as you see with the other tools. Let's talk about the biggest area of confusion with Grok Build and that's with the Composer 2.5.
03:03I see comments everywhere where people are trying to figure out is composer 2.5 cursor because it says cursor. Is it the same thing?
03:11I thought cursor was a graphical thing. What what's the difference between build and cursor 2.5? And I'm here to explain that to you.
03:17Cursor 2.5 is just basically a second model that you can use inside Grok Build. So you can hit that slash model command and you can say either use the Grok Build model to do this or you can do the Composer 2.5 fast model to do this. And I can tell you, the thing that says Composer 2.5 fast is the right branding because that thing is insanely fast.
03:40When I have projects working on it, I'll tell it to do something, and then it'll come back so quickly that I'm not even sure that it actually built what I asked. I'm just skeptical. I'm like, wait.
03:48There's no way that you're actually done with that. And sure enough, every time it actually is done with that. It's insanely fast.
03:54And if you're not sure when to use Grok Build or when to use the Composer 2.5 fast, Grok Build is good for bigger, longer running tasks, and your Composer 2.5 is just quick, get it kinda done.
04:07And if you're ever not sure, just go into Grok and just start asking, hey. This is what I think I should do.
04:13Should I use this or this? What's better than this? What are the difference between that?
04:17And just let it educate you about what its capabilities are because it knows it as good as you do. So, again, even though it says Cursor Composer 2.5, it's not actually Cursor because Cursor is that graphical IDE. And Grok Build and Composer 2.5 are just two separate models that you can use through that same terminal command line interface.
04:37Grok Build is bigger, more powerful for bigger projects. Composer 2.5 can still get stuff done, but it runs insanely fast. And if that finally helped it click for you, do me a favor and click that like because half the Internet is still arguing about what's what.
04:52And I just helped you skip some confusion. Let's talk about why Grok Build is absolutely crushing ChatGPT Codecs and Cloud Code.
05:00And I'll be the first one to admit, I love Claude code. I love ChatGPT codecs. I use them all the time.
05:06In fact, I have used my ChatGPT codecs so much that I'm out of credits until June 26, which as of the time of this recording is four more days. I use the heck out of both of those things.
05:18But there's three reasons that Rockville is one of the best on the market right now. The first one is the drift. When you use Claude code and when you use ChatGPT codecs, especially ChatGPT codecs, they tend to just drift.
05:32And if you're not managing it and specifically telling it to get back and specifically forcing it to update the project documentation and specifically telling it to look at the project documentation, you can start here and then way over here working on something that you didn't intend to.
05:47Whereas Grok has the plan built into its DNA, so it's always going back to that plan and trying to build what you guys agreed you were actually gonna build. And I can tell you, it just saves a lot of time. It saves a lot of unnecessary tokens and a lot of headache to have a build partner that's actually working towards the same goal as you.
06:05So right away, Grok Build wins on that dimension. The second reason that Grok Build wins right now, and this one's gonna be controversial, but let's be honest, it wins because of the person behind it.
06:15Grock billed as part of SpaceX x AI aka Elon Musk. And regardless of your political feelings, Elon Musk is hands down the best engineer on our planet right now and quite possibly the best in the history of humanity.
06:31He's up there with Edson. He's up there with Thomas Jefferson. He's up there with Howard Hughes.
06:38The things that this man has created and accomplished are insane. He's the reason we have electric cars.
06:44We have global internet. He's building tunnels under Vegas. He's put more stuff into space than any other country and now he's absolutely crushing in the AI world because he has the biggest data centers And we're probably gonna have data centers in space because of this guy which solves the electricity problem and solves the cooling problem.
07:05He's absolutely brilliant. He has a ton of companies. They generate a ton of cash.
07:09He has all the resources. So if you're thinking about building something that's for your company, Grok is positioned to be around for the long term. On the other hand, ChatGPT Codex is burning through a ton of cash.
07:22And if they don't continue to raise money from investors, they go bankrupt. So you could spend the next twelve months building all these things for your company, building all these workflows, and then just all of a sudden, Chatuchite Codex is gone because they run out of money to burn.
07:36Also, I don't particularly trust Sam Altman. I don't know him personally, but there's enough patterns that people have talked about that he might not be super trustworthy.
07:47And that's reflected in ChatGPT where it very frequently will lie to you. I have caught it so many times over the last two years just outright lying to me, and they call it hallucinating.
07:59Sometimes it almost feels like it's being willingly deceitful towards me. And then the last one is Claude. And Claude code is an amazing tool, but their leadership keeps for whatever reason trying to go pick fights with our government which is just not a good position to be in as a business.
08:16You don't want the people that make all the rules to have a reason to put you out of business, that's just dumb. I also don't particularly trust Dario. I've lived in the Bay Area for over twenty years and I've encountered a lot of people like him where there's just this elite, I'm smarter than everyone, I know more than everyone, I don't listen to everyone and and it, I just I see a lot of it in the way that Anthropic communicates and the way that they talk.
08:43They act like they wanna do good things for the planet, but then there's also just a lot of contradictions in what they say between their actual actions and their words. The other big thing with Claude Code is they don't own any data center.
08:55Also in a position where they can only really continue to survive if they keep raising money from investors. So you still run-in the same position with more risk to your business by using Claude because you might build a bunch of stuff for your business, and then twelve months later, they do something to piss off the government.
09:14And now they're no longer allowed to have a model out, which we just saw with the Fable release, or they run out of money and you're still stuck. So out of those three options, I would much rather have Brock build where they generate a ton of cash.
09:28Elon is smart enough to figure out how to work with the government regardless of who's in power. He worked with Obama. He worked with Trump and he worked with Biden.
09:36He's able to put his personal stuff aside and work with whoever's in charge. And he just hands down is the greatest engineer walking the planet right now. The third reason that you should be using Grok Build is the value that you get for your money is absolutely insane.
09:51The premium subscription right now, if you buy it through Xi is about $20 a month. You get Grok Build, you get the ability to make images and you also get the ability to make videos in Grok Imagine.
10:03And Grok Imagine is one of the best video generation tools that we have right now. And on top of that, you get a verified blue check mark x, some people call it Twitter, whatever social media account that allows you to promote your business in the social media space.
10:19So for all of that, for $20, you can't beat it. It's almost impossible to use Cloud Code without paying at least a $100 a month. And it seems like ChatGPT is more and more moving towards that because, again, I'm stopped out for five more days before they reset my usage.
10:36So I think I'm gonna end up having to upgrade to a $100 a month plan with them too. Grok, $20. I get all that stuff.
10:42I get blue check mark on my Twitter account. Let's talk about how we get this tool on our computer now. So if you go to grok.com and there's grok build right here and it has this really simple one line command that just you copy and paste into a terminal to install it.
10:57From there, we wanna make a project folder, and I like to just put things at the top level of my c drive. If this is stupid, let me know in the comments. But you can see I have a folder for Claude.
11:08I have a folder for Codex. I have a folder for Grok. So what you do is you go in your Grok folder, you make a new folder.
11:18And this works better if you don't put blank spaces in there. So we'll just make a a folder called test project, go into that folder. And what I like to do to keep it simple is I'm just gonna go up here.
11:29I'm gonna copy that path. We go into our terminal. We say c d and we put that path in there and then we type in Grok.
11:37And boom. We are now inside Grok. And go ahead and pause the video here if you need to to do your install.
11:44Come back and add a comment, I'm in. So I know how many of you joined the wonderful Grok Build universe. Let's do a quick feature review.
11:54So right away, one of the cool things that's up here is you see resume session. So what that means is when you close that terminal and come back, it still has your conversation, which some of the other tools on the market don't necessarily have that unless you specifically tell them to save a record of what you're working on.
12:11A lot of people have learned that the hard way where, you know, maybe your computer did a software update over the night and it shut down and you lost all of your conversation history. So Brock is keeping that by default, is nice. In your chat window, if you type in the slash, then you can start seeing all of the different things that it can do.
12:31And it's got all the things that you expect from everywhere else with plug ins. It's got a marketplace. It's got skills, all the stuff that you have.
12:39This one, I like the theme, and I use that to change the color to blue, which helps me see that I'm working in a Grock window or a Claude window or whatever. I like being able to change the theme and know exactly which one I'm working in. And then this is our plan feature.
12:54And that's the one that I talked about being super critical with Grock. So we type in plan.
13:01I want to build a simple k. So I said plan.
13:16I wanna build a simple app to demonstrate Grock's capabilities. It's looked in the folder, and now it's just gonna start asking me questions.
13:24Here's some suggestions for demo apps, like a task manager, research assistant, code playground, interactive dashboard, surprise me.
13:34I'm gonna go surprise me. Pick something simple but impressive. K.
13:37So this is the plan that it's creating. You see that it's creating diagrams. It's got a very simple explanation of what we're building, why we're building it, the goal, which is very cool.
13:49It's very important to make sure that you're aligned with your model on what goal you guys are working towards, what tech stack we're gonna use. It's got a list of what features we're we're gonna work on, um, the project structure, the data model, what the UI looks like, demo talking points.
14:05So, basically, it's making so I would be able to have a script to talk about the demo. Maybe that'll be a future video.
14:11Things that are not in scope and then our verification checklist. And then on here, I can either approve or I can request changes. Approve and request changes.
14:20So I'm gonna click these three columns, and I'm see how it turned to yellow?
14:24Now I'm working on this. I'm gonna say, I want four columns.
14:30It's a very high maintenance change. So see how it it got my, um, my change request in there? And then we just approved the plan.
14:37So it saw that I I put a comment in there, and it's asking me what I wanna do. Updated my plan. I can see red means a line that was taken out.
14:45Green was the line that was adding in. So, basically, changed the line. And now we've got a plan.
14:49I just say the word when I want it to start building. And I'm gonna go ahead and pause the recording and set a stopwatch so that I can tell you exactly how quickly it builds this thing.
15:00Because as you can see, I've got it set on the Composer 2.5 fast model, which as I told you is insanely fast. Okay. We're back.
15:08It took two minutes and thirty eight seconds, and three or four of those seconds were me not being fast enough with stopwatch after Kirk told me it was done. It is insanely fast. What it built is a super simple Kanban board.
15:23It's the basic thing that all the project managers use for managing projects. Very simple. Add a title, add a description, a priority in which column it goes into.
15:34Um, if this was real, I would wanna have a drag or drop. Actually, it oh my god. It it made a drag and drop.
15:40It made a drag and drop app in two minutes and thirty eight seconds, you guys. If you're not impressed with that, something is seriously wrong with you. We've got a little UI over here where we can see, uh, some percentage of what's complete.
15:53Uh, we can see how many are in progress. I can add a task. Yeah.
15:57This is insane, guys. Two minutes and thirty eight seconds to build this app for us. So that's Grok Build.
16:02Like I said, it's incredible. You guys should be trying it and testing it out and seeing what it can actually do because it's very new. It's not getting a lot of coverage right now.
16:09Everyone's so focused on ChatGPT Codecs and Cloud Code that no one's really using Grok Build. So get in there and try it.
16:16If you stuck around this long, let me give you one of the biggest reasons that I think you should be using Grok Build right now. And this is speculation.
16:23I have no proof of it, but I suspect that it has the most subsidized token use of any of the models because it's new. Elon's trying to get people to use it, and I think that they're just gonna let it run so that they get more and more data and they can improve the model. Again, that's a 100 speculation.
16:40I don't know. But it makes sense that they would just let you use it as much as you want just so they can get people on the platform. Also, he just paid $60,000,000,000 to buy Cursor.
16:49So that Cursor IDE that everyone loves, I'm pretty sure is gonna become part of this Grok build thing as a normal part of the plan that you're already playing paying for. So I suspect this to just get better and better and better over the next few months and be an insanely powerful tool. And then lastly, you can build images from the command line, which I've already done, and I'll show you in a future video.
17:13It's super sick. It's still early, but I'm betting hard on Grok Build to be one of the best models at the end of twenty twenty six for building projects. And if this helped you, please give me a like.
17:24It helps me grow my channel. I definitely appreciate it. Make sure you're on the subscribe list.
17:28We're gonna get back to doing my public build of the video editing tool. But as I said, I'm stuck not being able to use Chagic Pt Codex for more days, so I'm not gonna be able to give you an update on that for a few days. I am gonna continue building some stuff with Grok Build, and we'll continue to learn how it works.
17:44Just make sure that you come back. We'll continue getting better together every single
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A self-described full-stack engineer opens by crediting AI coding tools with changing how he works, then pivots hard: of the three major agents he uses daily, Grok Build is the one he thinks deserves more attention right now, and he spends the next seventeen minutes building the case.
Named ideas worth stealing.
04:54list
Three reasons Grok Build wins
- Less drift (plan-first workflow)
- Company/team behind it (cash-generating, durable)
- Price-to-value ($20/month bundles coding + image + video)
The presenter's core three-part argument for switching primary coding tools.
Steal forstructuring any tool-comparison video around a memorable numbered list of differentiators
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
16:55subscribe
“Make sure you're on the subscribe list... it helps me grow my channel.”
Soft, low-pressure ask at the very end, paired with a plug for his free Skool community mentioned earlier in the description.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
