Grok Build

Valency Bond™ works with Grok Build (opens in new tab), xAI's coding agent, over MCP using OAuth. Installing the Valency plugin brings the MCP connection and the research skills in one step.

Prerequisite

• Grok Build installed and working (grok version returns a version)

Setup

1. Add the Valency marketplace and install the plugin:

   grok plugin marketplace add valency-oss/valency-connectors && \
     grok plugin install valency --trust

   Why --trust?

   --trust lets Grok activate the package's remote MCP server. The package contains no local executable and no credentials; Grok owns the sign-in flow.

2. Start a new Grok session:

   grok

3. Authenticate Valency. Open the MCP manager, select valency, and press i:

   Grok Build

   /mcps

   Sign in when the browser opens.

   Note

   A Valency account is created automatically the first time you sign in. The email you use does not have to match the email on your xAI account.

4. Verify the connection. /mcps shows valency as connected, with the Valency tools (paper search, author lookup, citation lookup, trend analysis, and more) listed.

5. Ask (more prompt ideas):

   Use Valency to search for papers about quantum computing

You're connected

You see paper results in your terminal. You can also explicitly invoke Valency tool calls.

Skills

The plugin also installs a set of multi-step research workflows on top of the MCP tools. Each one is a prescribed chain of tool calls, not a single search.

Skill	Ask things like
profile	"Who is Yoshua Bengio and what do they work on?"
landscape	"Give me a landscape of cs.LG"
similar	"Find papers similar to arXiv 1706.03762"
trends	"Is diffusion model research still growing?"
network	"Who does Yann LeCun collaborate with?"
reading-list	"What should a student of geometric deep learning be reading?"
fresh-collaborators	"Who should this researcher be talking to that they aren't already?"

Trigger a skill by slash command or natural language:

Grok Build

/valency:profile Yoshua Bengio
What should David Hogg be reading next?

Troubleshooting

Plugin didn't install cleanly? Run grok plugin details valency. It should report the Valency skills and one HTTP MCP server. If the marketplace step failed, re-add it and install again.

Tools don't appear? Confirm /mcps shows valency as connected. If you installed without --trust, Grok won't activate the remote MCP server; reinstall with the flag.

Need to start over? Remove the plugin and its marketplace, then reinstall:

grok plugin uninstall valency && \
  grok plugin marketplace remove https://github.com/valency-oss/valency-connectors.git

The two forms are intentional: Grok accepts the OWNER/REPO shorthand when adding a marketplace and records it by its canonical Git URL, which the remove command expects.

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Need help?

If something isn't working, check Troubleshooting for common fixes. See the FAQ for general questions, or report an issue if you're still stuck.