When Grok Bot got its own email address on October 9, one rule stood out: you get one address, and you can't rename or delete it. That's tidy, but most people don't want one pile of mail. Receipts, newsletters, sign-up codes and travel bookings all need different handling.
On October 14, Sam Sokolin posted the answer: Grok Bot email now supports plus aliases.
His post names two things you can do:
1. Send and receive email using dedicated aliases. 2. Set up routines that only trigger for mail to a specific alias.
This guide covers what a plus alias is, how to plan a few, how to wire each one to its own routine, and what the official docs don't spell out yet.
A quick refresher on your Bot's address
From the official help page:
- You claim an address at
mail.grokbot.com, such asyourname@mail.grokbot.com. Ask your Bot (“Get yourself an email address”) or use the Email plugin under Connect apps. Nothing is claimed until you approve the card. - You can have one address. It belongs to you, not to one Bot, so all of your Bots can use it in your own chats and in routines you set up.
- There's no inbox view in the apps. You ask a Bot what arrived.
- New mail doesn't wake a Bot on its own. A Bot acts on incoming mail only through a routine.
- Every email a Bot sends waits for your approval. There's no unattended sending.
Elon Musk summed up the bigger picture a day earlier: every Grok Bot gets its own email address and can help analyze and summarize your mail too.
What a plus alias is
Plus addressing is a long-standing email convention. You add +something after the name part of an address, and mail still reaches the same mailbox. If your Bot's address is yourname@mail.grokbot.com, these all land in the same inbox:
yourname+receipts@mail.grokbot.comyourname+news@mail.grokbot.comyourname+travel@mail.grokbot.com
The useful part, per Sam's post, is that a routine can be set to fire only for one alias. You sort the mail before it arrives, simply by handing out the right address.
Why this matters
Before aliases, an email routine could filter by sender: anyone, a specific address, or a whole domain. The routines help also says plainly that routines can't filter by subject. That left a gap. A receipt from a new store, or a newsletter you just subscribed to, didn't match any sender rule.
With aliases, you choose the category at the moment you hand out the address. Give a shop +receipts, a newsletter +news, an airline +travel. The sender can be anyone; the alias says what the message is for.
Plan your aliases first
Before you hand out addresses, write a short list. A few ideas:
| Alias | Give it to | What the routine does |
|---|---|---|
+receipts | Online shops, subscriptions | Pull out store, date, amount and add it to a running list |
+news | Newsletters | Summarize the week's issues every Friday |
+signups | New services and trials | Note the service, and remind you before a trial ends |
+travel | Airlines, hotels, rentals | Pull out confirmation numbers, dates and times |
+team | A colleague or a form | Hand the message to the right Bot |
Keep it small. Every alias with its own routine is one more thing that spends usage when mail arrives.
Set it up
1. Claim the base address
If you haven't yet, ask your Bot: “Get yourself an email address.” It asks for a name, checks it's free, and shows an approval card. Choose carefully. The name rules allow lowercase letters, digits, dots, hyphens and underscores, up to 64 characters, and the address can't be changed later.
2. Create one routine per alias
Ask in chat. For example:
> Set up a routine: when an email arrives at yourname+receipts@mail.grokbot.com, pull out the store, date, total and order number, add a row to my receipts list, and tell me only if something looks wrong, like a charge I don't recognize.
> Set up a routine: when an email arrives at yourname+travel@mail.grokbot.com, pull out the confirmation number, dates and times, and add them to a trip summary.
Then open each routine and read When to run to confirm the trigger shows the alias you meant.
3. Test each one
Send a short test email to each alias from your personal account. Check that the right routine ran, and only that one. You can also press Test on a routine, but remember a test does real work.
4. Hand out the addresses
Update your sign-ups, receipts and newsletters to use the alias. Over a week or two the routing sorts itself.
Sending from an alias
Sam's post says your Bot can also send from an alias. That's handy when you want replies to come back to the same alias and its routine. As with all Bot email, the message waits as a draft until you approve it.
Example: a receipts lane, end to end
Here's how one alias might work over a month.
1. You claim yourname@mail.grokbot.com and decide +receipts is for anything you buy. 2. You ask your Bot for a routine that runs when mail arrives at yourname+receipts@mail.grokbot.com, pulls out the store, date and total, and adds a row to a running list. You tell it to stay quiet unless something looks wrong. 3. You send yourself a test receipt. You check the routine ran and the row appeared. 4. Over the next few weeks, you use the alias at checkout whenever a store asks for an email. 5. At month's end you ask: “Total my receipts for October by store.” The Bot already has the list.
Nothing about the store had to be known in advance. The alias did the sorting.
Who it's for
- People with many Bots. The address belongs to your account, and all your Bots can use it. Aliases are a simple way to give each Bot its own lane.
- Anyone drowning in receipts and newsletters. One alias per kind of mail turns a pile into a pipeline.
- Small businesses that want a contact address for one kind of request without exposing a personal inbox.
Gotchas
- The help page hasn't caught up yet. As of this writing, the official email help doesn't mention plus aliases. Sam's post is the source for the feature. We'll update this guide when the docs change.
- Some details aren't documented. For example, it isn't stated whether an alias routine matches the message's visible To line or the address the mail was actually delivered to. That can matter for forwarded mail. Test with a forward before you rely on it.
- Aliases aren't secret. Anyone who sees
yourname+receipts@can guessyourname@and send there. Aliases organize mail; they don't hide your address. - Default sender checks still apply. By default, an email routine only runs for senders that pass standard authentication checks. Mail from a poorly configured sender may not trigger the routine.
- Usage. Each routine run spends usage. A busy
+newsalias with a run per message can add up. Prefer a daily or weekly summary for high-volume mail. - Spam stays out. Mail that fails the spam or virus scan is kept without body or attachments and never starts a routine, alias or not.
The takeaway
One address used to mean one pile. With plus aliases, one Bot address can act like a small set of addresses, each with its own job. Plan a few aliases, give each a routine, test it with a real email, and let the address you hand out do the sorting.