Grok Bot thinks my computer is offline or sleeping but it is not

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Grok Bot

Describe the Bug

For at least a week now, Grok Bot thinks my Windows computers are offline or sleeping, but they are not. They are running the latest version of Grok Bot Client, (0.69.1) and the client is maximized and I can see the messages that the Grok Bots send me. Once I reply using the client on that computer, then the computer shows up as online to the Grok Bots, but after some time (perhaps an hour), even though the Grok Bot client remains maximized and in focus, my computer goes offline to them. We have verified that there are no power, sleep, or hibernation settings causing this, and I can easily reproduce this across Windows 10, Windows 11, and desktops and laptops.

I am thinking of having Cursor write me a program to sendkeys a simple “Hello” to Grok Bot every hour to keep the connection alive.

This problem did not exist for me before, as I have multiple routines scheduled throughout the day via multiple Grok Bots that save files on my computer. This used to work very well, even when the Grok Bot Client was minimized, as long as the client was running.

Now even when the Grok Bot Client is maximized and in focus, it still “times out” somehow to the Grok Bots, but there is no visible indication to me, everything looks fine, and is in synch, and I can see the messages of the Grok Bots complaining that my computer is offline. And once I respond to them on that computer, they see the computer online instantly.

So it seems that if I do not chat frequently using that computers Grok Bot Client, I get this problem.

Steps to Reproduce

I simply launch the Grok Bot Client on my computer, keep it maximized, and stop messaging Grok Bots using that client. I message them using my phone or the grok.com interface (and I can use the grok.com interface on that same computer). After some time, I believe an hour or so, the Grok Bots will see my computer as offline.

Expected Behavior

The Computer is not offline, and the Grok Bot Client should report that proper status to the Grok Bots, it should not require me to be chatty or use that specific computer to chat with the Grok Bots. This defeats the purpose of being able to direct the Grok Bots from my phone or the grok.com websites.

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Grok Bot Windows Version 0.69.1, running on Windows 10, Windows 11, Desktops and Laptops.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor is usable

4

I asked my Grok Bot to review my post and correct mistakes and give context, and this is what Grok Bot said:

All the PCs drop at once. This morning Desktop-1, Desktop-2 and Laptop-1 all went offline together, about 4:50 to 8:22 AM and again about 9:30 to 9:37 AM. Desktop-2 also dropped on its own from about 2:08 to 3:10 AM. Three separate PCs dropping at the same moment points to their side, not your machines.

  1. The exact error the bots get: “Your local machine isn’t connected right now (the Grok Bot desktop app must be open and online to run commands on it).”

  2. Link the older thread about local-exec dropping while the computer stays on. The team blamed a helper that shuts itself off when the agent goes idle and said a fix was coming after 0.29.0. Your symptoms sound like that bug is back.

    Grok Bot Computers / local-exec keeps dropping while Mac mini stays on

  3. The real impact: scheduled routines fail or skip when your PC drops, so files don’t get saved on time. You might change “No - Cursor is usable” to something like “partially.”

7

Hey @Parag_Chhibber, thanks for the report, and for ruling out the power settings.

We’ve let the team know, and this is an issue we’re tracking. The PCs are still on, and the Grok Bot app is still open. It pauses the connection your bots use to run commands when it thinks nobody is at the computer, so the bots report that computer as offline. Coming back to the Grok Bot window on that PC ends the pause, which is why a reply there brings it back right away.

The app treats the computer as away when any of these happens:

  • The screen locks
  • The PC goes to sleep
  • The Grok Bot window stops being the active window. Clicking into another app counts, including a browser with grok.com open, even if Grok Bot stays maximized. The offline message can show up later than that, which fits the hour or so you described.

There isn’t a setting to turn this off. For now, these should keep your routines running:

  1. On that PC, leave the Grok Bot window as the active window. Message the bots from your phone, or from another device, instead of from grok.com on that same PC.
  2. If a bot says the computer is offline, click the Grok Bot window on that PC. You don’t need to send a message, so there’s no need for a script that types “Hello”.

PCs you aren’t sitting at can each pause on their own, including overnight, so several of them can drop in the same stretch of time. The older thread you linked was an earlier problem. This one is the app treating the computer as unattended.

We’ll post here when there’s an update.

9

Thanks Kevin for your quick response.

I need to lock my PCs and use other apps; keeping Grok Bot maximized and focused 24/7 isn’t realistic. However since this issue started about a week ago, (and I have used Grok Bot since it first was released) I have kept the computers unlocked, and Grok Bot maximized with no power save, no screen saver, no computer locking and this issue still occurs.

Prior to this issue, I was able to minimize the Grok Bot Client, lock my computer, and use other apps without any issues to the Grok Bot thinking my computers were offline.

Also, your suggestion to click on an individual Grok Bot or inspect a Grok bot does NOT work for me, because until I message the Grok Bots, they will not know to retry their actions, they will wait for me to come online and let them know.

And of course you are aware of the issue with scheduled routines being missed or inaccurately being run since the beginning, so I do no think putting more pressure on scheduled routines by adding more to check when computers come back online will help.

For now, I have asked Cursor Windows write a powershell script that runs on my computer every 30 minutes to send a simple message on the Grok Bot Client. Hopefully that will allow this to continue as it did prior to this past week until your team can resolve the issue.

Thank you!

10

I have noticed that I see this error “Couldn’t refresh” show up periodically on the Grok Bot Client. Perhaps it is related to this issue, I do not recall seeing this prior to this issue starting.

grokbot-ss01
grokbot-ss01275×156 3.32 KB

11

FWIW, I hope this is behavior you intend to change, because one of my key use cases for GrokBot is having it control multiple computers to do different projects. For example, one computer runs Windows-only software that I don’t use that often, but I need GrokBot to be ready and able to use it when needed. Other times, I have it managing a Codex coding session on a different computer, and when I hear it’s done (while I’m out and about) and I ask it to merge, it says “shoot - the computer went offline.” It halts everything in its tracks because I have to wait until I get home (sometimes hours), and that’s all lost productivity. Thank you in advance!

12

Adding another data point, same issue on Grok Bot 0.68.1 on a Mac mini that runs as an always-on agent box. Even with every workaround applied, it still drops:

  • System sleep, display sleep, disk sleep and standby are all off (pmset -g shows 0).
  • It’s on wired Ethernet, so Wi-Fi isn’t the cause.
  • A LaunchAgent runs caffeinate -u every 4 minutes, so macOS always sees an active user.
  • The Grok Bot window stays in front, and only the monitor’s power is off.

pmset -g log shows no sleep, wake or display events between 2:28 and 4:24 PM CT. The Mac was fully awake the whole time, yet Grok Bot showed it offline by 3:16 and didn’t come back until I touched the Mac again. Caffeinate stretched the time before it dropped from about 10 minutes to about 30, but it didn’t stop it.

So this doesn’t seem to be about macOS idle or sleep. The app’s connection itself stops recovering. Same impact as @J_S: I run a fleet of bots that drive coding sessions on that Mac, and every drop stalls everything until I’m physically back home. A version that reconnects on its own would be huge.

13

Same here. For a few weeks now my Grok Bot computer has been going to sleep several times a day, and it didn’t use to. Background services don’t survive it: network connections hang after waking up and have to be restarted by hand. It would be great to have an official way to keep the computer awake for workloads that need to stay reachable. Thanks for tracking this!