Grok Bot local-exec-daemon on macOS dies after staying healthy; Mac unreachable until leftover processes are killed

Support Bug Reports
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Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Somewhere else…

Describe the Bug

Grok Bot desktop on macOS loses the Mac local-computer link after the app has been healthy. This is not a permissions / Always-allow issue.

The Mac is reached only through a detached local-exec daemon:

/Applications/Grok Bot.app/Contents/MacOS/Grok Bot
/Applications/Grok Bot.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/dist/local-exec-daemon/main.cjs

That process registers as a local-exec provider and must send ping heartbeats. Host liveness window is 30 seconds (SAND_LOCAL_EXEC_LIVENESS_WINDOW_MS = 30000). There is no user-facing keep-alive or auto-respawn. Leftover daemon processes after a crash block a clean respawn. Agents cannot recover this themselves because ExternalShell is that dead channel.

Failure sequence (same session):

  1. Stale heartbeat while the provider is still registered: Your computer “anonymous” is unavailable ‚Äî it looks disconnected.
  2. Then no providers: Your local machine isn’t connected right now (the Grok Bot desktop app must be open and online to run commands on it).

The computer id/label shown is “anonymous”. Cloud Agent Computer (the shared box) keeps working. Cursor IDE is fine. This is only the Grok Bot Mac local-exec link.

Observed on 16 Aug 2026 (WITA / UTC+8), Grok Bot 0.20.0, leftover 0.16.0 crashpad still running from an older install:

  • 2:08pm: daemon pid 67049 started; stayed up ~80 min
  • 3:31pm: stale heartbeat (anonymous); 3:37pm no provider
  • Later relaunches: pid 71938 (died within a minute), 72164 (dropped ~14 min), 72817 (5:14pm)
  • 5:35pm stale heartbeat on 72817, then recovered without relaunch at 5:37pm (same pid) ‚Äî heartbeat can miss and come back
  • 6:10pm stale again on the same pid

A Mac reboot only cleans leftover daemons / old crashpad / hung Electron. It does not stop the 30s heartbeat miss.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Grok Bot desktop 0.20.0 on macOS and leave it running (do not Cmd+Q).
  2. Confirm the Mac is reachable from a Grok Bot agent (trivial local command succeeds). Confirm a local-exec-daemon process is up:
    ps aux | grep local-exec-daemon
  3. Leave the app in the foreground or background. Do not change Always-allow / local execution settings.
  4. Wait. In this case the first healthy run lasted ~80 minutes, then a 30-second heartbeat miss.
  5. Agent calls to the Mac then fail with: Your computer “anonymous” is unavailable ‚Äî it looks disconnected.
  6. Shortly after, the daemon is gone and the error becomes: Your local machine isn’t connected right now (the Grok Bot desktop app must be open and online to run commands on it).
  7. Relaunching the app without killing leftover local-exec-daemon processes often fails to restore the link. Workaround that works:
    osascript -e ‘tell application “Grok Bot” to quit’; sleep 2; pkill -f ‘local-exec-daemon’; sleep 1; open -a “Grok Bot”

Expected Behavior

While Grok Bot desktop is open and online, the local-exec-daemon should keep heartbeating (or auto-respawn) so the Mac stays reachable. A missed ping should not permanently drop the machine or require the user to kill leftover processes by hand. The computer should have a real name, not “anonymous”.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Grok Bot desktop 0.20.0 (stable), macOS.
App path: /Applications/Grok Bot.app
Also observed a leftover 0.16.0 crashpad handler still running from a prior install.
This is Grok Bot desktop, not Cursor IDE / CLI / iOS. Product dropdown has no Grok Bot option, so this is filed as Somewhere else.

For AI issues: which model did you use?

N/A — not a model/chat issue. Local-exec daemon / Mac connection.

For AI issues: add Request ID with privacy disabled

N/A. Host error class seen: SAND-E0608 (desktopLocalExecSpawnFailed). No public Request ID. In-app Cursor feedback for the same bug was already submitted 16 Aug 2026 (no public URL).

Additional Information

Not a duplicate of:

  • Grok Bot ExternalShell blocked despite Always allow (permissions / Always-allow; staff workaround mentions killing local-exec-daemon leftovers, but the bug there is UNAPPROVED ExternalShell, not a later heartbeat miss)
  • Grok Bot issues - who can help? (cloud setup / “Can’t reach your computer” / NXDOMAIN ‚Äî the Agent Computer, not the Mac daemon)
  • Higgsfield MCP 30‚Äì60s disconnect (plugin session, not local-exec)

Forum search for local-exec-daemon only hits Mohit’s workaround on the Always-allow thread. No existing report of a live daemon that later misses its 30s ping, labels the Mac “anonymous”, then vanishes until leftovers are killed.

Official docs only treat local-computer failures as a permission setting. Agents cannot restart the desktop app remotely while the link is down.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

5

Hi @gaharrington!

Thanks for the report. We have a fix for the issue ready, and it should come in the next Grok Bot release.