Does grok mcp add work with authenticated remote MCP servers?

Yes. The Grok Build CLI accepts custom headers when registering a remote server. Dead Simple's hosted server at https://api.deadsimple.email/mcp authenticates with a single header: Authorization: Bearer dse_your_api_key.

Do xAI's per-invocation tool fees apply to email tools?

No. xAI charges $5 per thousand invocations for its server-side tools like web search and code execution, but client-side function calls and MCP tools carry no invocation fee. Email tool calls cost tokens only, plus your Dead Simple plan.

How much does Dead Simple Email cost for a Grok setup?

The free tier includes 5 inboxes and 5,000 emails per month with no credit card required, enough to run the MCP integration or the function-calling loop in production on low-volume workloads. Paid plans are $5/mo for 15 inboxes, $29/mo for 100, and $99/mo for 500.

Grok & Grok Bot Integration — Dead Simple Email

Q: Does the xAI API have a built-in email tool?

No. The xAI Agent Tools API ships web search, X search, code execution, image generation, and collections search. There is no email tool, so email comes in through an MCP server or custom function calling.

Two Integrations, One Inbox

Quick disambiguation, because xAI shipped a lot in one week: Grok Bot is the always-on agent product launched in beta on August 11, 2026, with each bot running on its own cloud computer. grok-4.6 is the flagship API model released August 12, 2026, built for long-running agents with a 500k context window. Neither one ships with email: the xAI Agent Tools API covers web search, X search, code execution, image generation, and collections search, and stops there.

Dead Simple fills the gap in two ways:

Option A: Grok Bot via remote MCP. One grok mcp add command registers Dead Simple's hosted MCP server and gives the bot 14 email tools: its own inboxes, send, reply, threading, and verification-code extraction.
Option B: the Grok API via function calling. Declare email tools in the tools array of a grok-4.6 Responses API call and execute them with the deadsimple SDK. Client-side function calls carry no xAI invocation fee, unlike the $5-per-thousand server-side tools.

Option A: Grok Bot via Remote MCP

Grok Bot registers remote MCP servers through the Grok Build CLI. Dead Simple's server is hosted, speaks Streamable HTTP, and authenticates per-request with a bearer header, so there is nothing to install or run:

          
          terminal
        
grok mcp add deadsimple https://api.deadsimple.email/mcp \
  --transport http \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer dse_your_api_key_here"

# Confirm the 14 email tools registered
grok mcp list

Get your key from the dashboard under Settings → API Keys. Then prompt the bot: "Create an inbox for yourself and email me its address." It calls create_inbox and send_email on its own.

The 14 tools Grok Bot gets

create_inbox, list_inboxes, send_email, read_messages, read_message, reply_to_message, forward_message, wait_for_email, get_verification_code, get_verification_link, list_threads, read_thread, delete_inbox, and get_usage. The verification tools matter most for Grok Bot: an agent signing itself into services on its cloud computer turns "check your email to continue" into one tool call. Full reference on the MCP Server page.

Option B: Function Calling on the Grok API

Building directly on the xAI API? Use grok-4.6 with the Responses API (POST https://api.x.ai/v1/responses; Chat Completions is now marked legacy, and the old grok-4 / grok-3 model IDs are retired). The API is OpenAI-compatible, so the standard openai package works:

          
          grok_email.py
        
from openai import OpenAI
from deadsimple import DeadSimple

grok = OpenAI(api_key=XAI_API_KEY, base_url="https://api.x.ai/v1")
dse = DeadSimple(DSE_API_KEY)

response = grok.responses.create(
    model="grok-4.6",
    tools=EMAIL_TOOLS,          # JSON Schema function definitions
    tool_choice="auto",
    input="Create an inbox and send a test email to hello@example.com")

# Execute each function_call with the deadsimple SDK,
# return function_call_output items, repeat until done.

The complete runnable tool loop, including the four tool definitions and the executor, is in the blog walkthrough linked below. For receive-driven agents, register a webhook with dse.webhooks.create(url, events=["message.received"]) and start a Grok run when mail arrives instead of polling.

Example Prompts

"Create an inbox called Grok Ops and tell me its address." — create_inbox, then the bot reports back.
"Sign up for the newsletter at example.com using your own address and confirm the subscription." — create_inbox + get_verification_link.
"Check your inbox and reply to anything from a customer; forward billing questions to finance@company.com." — read_messages + reply_to_message + forward_message.
"Email me a nightly status digest from your own address while you work this task." — send_email on a schedule the bot manages.
"How much of the email plan have you used this month?" — get_usage.

Why Dead Simple Is a Good Fit for Grok

An address the agent owns. Grok Bot can OAuth into a human's Gmail, but that risks account suspension and mixes agent traffic into personal mail. A Dead Simple inbox is the bot's own identity, revocable without touching yours.
Hosted MCP, zero infrastructure. One CLI command against api.deadsimple.email/mcp. No local process on the bot's cloud computer, no OAuth dance.
Free tool calls. xAI bills server-side tools at $5 per thousand invocations; MCP and function-calling email tools cost tokens only.
Prompt-injection scanning on inbound. Every received email is scanned and scored before your agent acts on it, which matters more when the agent runs unsupervised.
Free plan is enough to build. Five inboxes and 5,000 emails/month, no card required.

Full Walkthrough

For the step-by-step guide, including the complete grok-4.6 function-calling loop, cost breakdown, and backend comparison, read the blog post:

How to Give Grok Bot Its Own Email Inbox

FAQ

Grok is xAI's assistant. Grok Bot is the always-on agent product launched in beta August 11, 2026: each bot runs on its own cloud computer and works unsupervised. grok-4.6 is the flagship API model, released August 12, 2026 with a 500k context window, and it is the model to use for agentic workloads.

No. The Agent Tools API ships web search, X search, code execution, image generation, and collections search. There is no email tool, so email comes in through an MCP server or custom function calling.

Yes. The Grok Build CLI accepts custom headers when registering a remote server. Dead Simple's hosted server needs one header: Authorization: Bearer dse_your_api_key.

No. xAI charges $5 per thousand invocations for its server-side tools, but client-side function calls and MCP tools carry no invocation fee. Email tool calls cost tokens only, plus your Dead Simple plan.

The free tier includes 5 inboxes and 5,000 emails per month with no credit card required. Paid plans are $5/mo for 15 inboxes, $29/mo for 100, and $99/mo for 500.

Related Integrations

MCP Server — the underlying MCP server used by this integration
Hermes Agent — same remote MCP server, different agent host
OpenClaw — same MCP server, different AI agent host
OpenAI Agents SDK — the same function-calling pattern on OpenAI models
Python SDK — the client used in the function-calling loop
Browser Use — verification-code flows for browser agents