More or Less · Topics · Episode #163
Grokbot Is Shockingly Good -- and Building Your Own iPhone App Is Now a Weekend Project
Clip from the full recording, 39:35–47:33 · download mp4 · watch at this point on YouTube
Brit and Dave both rate Elon's Grok agent harness the best-designed product in the category despite its brand confusion, and Dave's Bitrig-built iPhone dev tool shows how cheap it's become to build (though not to distribute) real software.
Brit’s week testing Grokbot – xAI’s consumer agent harness, built on the Cursor acquisition and tangled up with SpaceX, Tesla and X branding – gets a rave review from both her and Dave. Brit calls it the most consumer-friendly agent product she’s used, easy to onboard, capable of running multiple specialized agents (a research agent, a general agent) and simple enough to hand to a “normie friend in Texas.” Dave goes further: “it’s definitely the best design so far, by a long shot,” and floats that Grok might be the third foundation lab genuinely in the game. Both acknowledge the branding is a mess – Brit gets logged into “SpaceX AI” and “Cursor” mid-flow – and that being tied to Elon and the Grok name is a real liability with parts of the audience, even as Dave notes “in Texas they’ll love it.”
Dave pivots the conversation to distribution versus technology, echoing the earlier OpenRouter debate: xAI also launched a GitHub competitor that keeps going down under bot traffic, and Dave’s point is that building a credible clone of what used to be a hard-to-build product is now trivial – “three people sitting somewhere in Elon’s office” can spin one up. That thread leads Sam and Dave into their own examples: Dave describes his portfolio company Bitrig (built by former Apple SwiftUI engineers), which now lets him build and ship real iPhone apps entirely from his phone via a server-based dev environment, sidestepping Apple’s on-device compile restrictions, and push them to TestFlight. Sam says he’s built roughly six personal apps this way (a portfolio tracker, a health app) and admits he needs to actually try Grok now that Brit and Dave are so bullish on it.
Key points
- Grokbot (xAI's agent harness) gets high marks from both Brit and Dave for design and ease of onboarding -- Dave calls it "the best design so far, by a long shot."
- Brand confusion is real: Grokbot routes users through SpaceX, Cursor and Tesla-adjacent branding mid-session, which Brit flags as confusing and a possible liability given feelings about Elon.
- Dave floats that Grok could become "the third foundation lab that is truly in the game."
- xAI also shipped a GitHub competitor that's been unreliable under bot traffic -- Sam's point: building a credible clone of what used to be a hard product is now trivial.
- Distribution, not software, remains the hard problem -- echoing the OpenRouter conversation earlier in the episode.
- Dave's portfolio company Bitrig (ex-Apple SwiftUI engineers) built a server-based dev environment that lets him build and ship real iPhone apps entirely from his phone to TestFlight.
- Sam has built roughly six personal-use apps (portfolio tracker, health app) this way and plans to finally try Grok given Brit and Dave's enthusiasm.
Where they landed
Quotes
“It's definitely the best. It's definitely the best design so far, by a long shot. I have serious respect for the product work and design work done here.”— Dave
“If I had a normie friend in Texas who wanted to play with an agentic harness, I would just send it to them.”— Brit
“You can build any iPhone app for yourself now. I'm building front ends for things in fully and Swift on my iPhone from my iPhone and then sending them out on TestFlight.”— Dave
Suggested tweets
Dave Morin's verdict on Grokbot: “It's definitely the best design so far, by a long shot.” Coming from the man who's tried everything.
Tweet this →Building software is now trivial -- Dave Morin is shipping full iPhone apps from his phone to TestFlight. Distribution is still the hard part.
Tweet this →Brit Morin on Grok's Elon problem: it's the best-designed agent harness she's used -- and also the one she's least sure normal people will touch.
Tweet this →All topics · Full episode #163 + transcript · Subscribe on YouTube · Spotify