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What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

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Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#91
> The "Improve the model" toggle makes no difference — ON or OFF, the whole repo is uploaded the same way.

Oh wow that's real bad. I'm assuming most AI shops' own harnesses do something similar when you opt in for their data collection, but them doing it even if you turn it off is diabolical.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does OpenAI also have access to all github repos via partnership with microsoft?

GitHub Copilot engineer here working on identity, safety, and privacy - no, even Microsoft doesn’t have access to all GitHub repos. As years have passed since the acquisition “company” delineations have blurred a bit, but Microsoft employees still need to go through a separate onboarding process to access any GitHub company resources (internal repositories, telemetry, documentation, etc.), and then we have an additio…

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Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#94

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there are 2.7 m starlink subscribers in US, I don't think they are fools.

There is a German proverb, that goes roughly like this: "eating shit is good for you, billions of flys can't be wrong!"

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#95
Isn't that expected? I always assumed the agent owns (at least) the current workspace (whatever dir it's launched in) and so can do whatever it wants in there. If they actually use this try and do things in the backend and saving prompt RTTs and tool calls that would be in my interest, no?

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#96
post #25

This is one of the reasons why native proprietary coding agent runners like claude-code, codex, grok-build etc are so dangerous for privacy… you just don’t know what “secret sauce” they’ll add in the next update… It’s much safer to use something like opencode and use models via their API… however, the tradeoff is that it will never perform as well as it does in their native agent runners…

I agree with you, but Codex is open source.

Is the server side open-source too, as gruez brought up in the sibling comment?

Technically they can still do potentially any- and everything undetected there; and for what it’s worth, even with a closed-source client bad behavior would get detected eventually through network inspection.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be _extremely_ surprising if private repos were available via that contract. Corporations wouldn't use GitHub at all if anyone other than those given direct access had read/copy permission.

It wouldnt be _that_ surprising since they committed widespread copyright violations building the models, plus the recent Apple IP theft...

Disclosing private repos against the owner's intent is a much more immediate and significant business risk than violating the license of open source code.

Maybe that shouldn't be the case, but it is.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#98

"It uploads the whole repository — every tracked file's content plus git history — independent of what the agent reads" Holy cow!!!! I mean I kinda expected Elon would do something like this to try to catch-up.. but this is extremely concerning. This is precisely the reason, even though their pricing is competitive and grok-4.5 is actually good enough, I chose not to go with them.

I was hesitant to try the free trial exactly because I haven't found any info about what data was required to share...

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub Copilot engineer here working on identity, safety, and privacy - no, even Microsoft doesn’t have access to all GitHub repos. As years have passed since the acquisition “company” delineations have blurred a bit, but Microsoft employees still need to go through a separate onboarding process to access any GitHub company resources (internal repositories, telemetry, documentation, etc.), and then we have an additio…

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Prove which part?

Prove that I work at GitHub? Username + LinkedIn can show (not prove) that easily.

Prove that we have an entitlements system which regulates and audits access? I could point you to https://github.com/entitlements, but it’s all private repositories so that won’t prove much either.

Prove that there are no OpenAI employees with access to GitHub systems? Not sure how I’d do that without dumping (what you would still need to trust me is) the entirety of our org chart/HR system, which I’m not willing to do because I do enjoy being employed and am not exactly obfuscating my identity here.

Prove that HN has a strong anti-Microsoft bias? Well that one is pretty easy actually, you’re helping prove it yourself!

Let’s be real, we now live in a post-truth world. Nothing can truly be proven or disproven outside of formal logic and mathematics. You can either believe what I’m saying as good faith insider knowledge sharing (which is unfortunately rare nowadays) or you can not. Makes no difference to me.

Re: What xAI's Grok build CLI sends to xAI: A wire-level analysis

#100
post #89

How do these findings compare to Codex, Claude code, and cursor

Cursor is the closest as it uploads your entire source code to build a search index.

Oh and they just shipped Grok in Cursor. Yay.
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