AI Pulse · Under the Radar

xAI shipped Grok Bot, a coding agent tied to Grok. Five days later, Elie Steinbock, the developer behind Inbox Zero, released an open clone called Rakazo on GitHub. It’s already picked up 747 stars, growing at about 165 a day, which is fast for a project this new.

Here’s the part that actually matters for a business owner. Rakazo isn’t a Grok wrapper. It’s model agnostic. You can run it with Claude, GPT, Grok, or a local model, and you swap between them without rewriting your setup. It’s Apache 2.0 licensed, which means no vendor lock, no company controlling the plane your agent runs on, and no risk of the tool changing terms or pricing on you overnight. You own your stack.

Why this is worth watching: big AI labs keep releasing flashy, closed tools built around their own models. Independent developers keep answering with open versions that work with anything. That pattern has played out before, and it usually means the open version becomes the practical choice for anyone who doesn’t want to bet their workflow on one company’s roadmap. For a small or mid-sized business, that’s the real signal here, not the star count.

If you’re experimenting with AI agents for coding, support, or internal tools, this is a reminder to think about lock-in before you build anything serious. Tools that let you switch models without switching your whole system are worth more than they look on day one. This kind of flexibility, plugging in different models depending on cost or task, is the kind of thing we build into an AI command centre, so teams aren’t stuck rebuilding every time a new model ships.

Nothing here is confirmed beyond what’s on the Rakazo GitHub page. Adoption numbers move fast on new repos, so treat the current stars as a snapshot, not a verdict.