The outcome

Get into the official xAI API experience with the right account and a setup you understand.

xAI API is a developer platform for Grok text, reasoning, vision, image, video, voice, realtime, retrieval, and tool-using applications. Building Grok-powered text, coding, reasoning, multimodal, media, realtime voice, retrieval, and tool-using applications through production APIs. This guide narrows that broad capability into one repeatable outcome, with checkpoints that keep the source material and your judgment in the loop.

Before you begin

Set the boundary before the tool starts.

Choose one real task, identify who will use the result, and decide what evidence or test will make the result acceptable. Gather only the source material needed for that task. If the work contains confidential, personal, regulated, or client-owned information, confirm that the platform and account are approved before sharing it.

Troiana principle

AI should make the work easier to inspect. If the workflow removes the source, the owner, or the review step, redesign the workflow.

Step by step

A workflow you can repeat.

  1. 01

    Start at https://console.x.ai/ and confirm the domain before entering account or payment information.

  2. 02

    For desktop use, follow the official download link. Current availability: The xAI API is managed through the browser-based xAI Console and accessed from server applications through REST, the xAI SDK, OpenAI-compatible clients, and supported JavaScript libraries..

  3. 03

    An xAI account and funded team, a server-side API key, approved models and data retention, rate and spend budgets, representative evaluations, tool authorization, content and media controls, observability, and incident ownership.

  4. 04

    Sign in with the account you intend to keep using, then review plan, data, notification, and permission settings.

  5. 05

    Run one low-risk test task before connecting sensitive files, repositories, or workspace data.

Working standard

What good use looks like.

  • Use official download pages.
  • Review permissions during setup.
  • Keep installers and applications updated.

By default, xAI says API requests and responses are encrypted at rest and retained for 30 days for abuse auditing, though not used for training without explicit permission. Team-wide Zero Data Retention prevents prompt and output persistence but disables or changes stored Responses, Files, Collections, Batch, deferred, media, and voice-history features. Keep keys server-side, verify the response retention header, minimize data, set storage deliberately, authorize tools outside the model, expire or delete files and public URLs, and never expose model-selected actions directly.

Official references

Check the current product documentation.

Features, plan limits, availability, and data controls change. These official pages are the starting points used for this collection.