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The xAI LLM node connects your workflows to xAI’s Grok family of language models. Use it to generate text responses, analyze documents, or build AI-powered workflows — for example, generating market commentary, classifying financial documents, or building chatbots that leverage Grok’s reasoning and search capabilities.

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Core Functionality

  • Generate text completions and conversational responses using Grok models
  • Access specialized model variants including search-enabled and fast-reasoning models
  • Process system instructions and dynamic prompts with variable interpolation
  • Stream responses in real time for long-running generations
  • Return structured JSON output with optional schema enforcement
  • Track token usage and credit consumption per run
  • Apply content moderation, PII detection, and safety guardrails
  • Retry failed executions automatically with configurable intervals

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Tool Inputs

  • System Instructions — (String) Instructions that guide the model’s behavior, tone, and how it should use data provided in the prompt
  • Prompt — (String) The data sent to the model. Type {{ to open the variable builder and reference outputs from other nodes
  • Model * — (Enum (Dropdown), default: grok-4-0709) Select from available Grok models
  • Use Personal Api Key — (Boolean, default: Yes) Toggle to use your own xAI API key
  • Api Key — (String) Your xAI API key. Visible when Use Personal Api Key is enabled
* indicates a required field

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Tool Outputs

  • response — (String (or Stream<String> when streaming)) The generated text response from the model
  • prompt_response — (String) The combined prompt and response content
  • tokens_used — (Integer) Total number of tokens consumed (input + output)
  • input_tokens — (Integer) Number of input tokens sent to the model
  • output_tokens — (Integer) Number of output tokens generated by the model
  • credits_used — (Decimal) VectorShift AI credits consumed for this run

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Overview

The xAI LLM node in workflows lets you place a Grok model on the canvas and configure it through the settings panel. xAI offers models with different speed-reasoning tradeoffs and built-in search capabilities.

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Use Cases

  • Market commentary generation — Generate real-time market commentary using Grok’s search-enabled models that can access current data.
  • Financial document analysis — Analyze earnings reports, SEC filings, or research notes using Grok’s reasoning capabilities.
  • Fast classification tasks — Use fast-reasoning variants for high-throughput classification of financial transactions or documents.
  • Research synthesis — Combine search capabilities with reasoning to synthesize information across multiple sources for investment research.
  • Client communication drafting — Draft personalized financial communications using Grok’s conversational capabilities.

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How It Works

  1. Add the node to your workflow. From the toolbar, open the AI category and drag the xAI node onto the canvas.
xAI node being dragged onto the canvas
  1. Write your System Instructions. Enter instructions in the System Instructions field.
  2. Configure the Prompt. In the Prompt field, type {{ to reference upstream node outputs.
  3. Select a model. Use the Model dropdown to choose a Grok model. Available options include grok-4-0709, grok-4, grok-4-search, grok-4-fast-reasoning, grok-4-fast-non-reasoning, grok-4-0625, grok-3-fast, grok-3-fast-beta, grok-3-mini-beta, and others.
xAI node showing the Model dropdown
  1. Provide an API key. The Use Personal Api Key toggle defaults to Yes. Enter your xAI API key in the Api Key field.
  2. Open settings. Click the gear icon (⚙) to configure settings.
xAI node settings panel
  1. Connect outputs. Wire the response output to downstream nodes. Click the Outputs button to see all available outputs.
xAI node connected to upstream and downstream nodes
  1. Run your workflow. Execute the pipeline to process inputs through the Grok model.

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Settings

All settings below are accessed via the gear icon (⚙) on the node.
SettingTypeDefaultDescription
ProviderDropdownxAIThe LLM provider.
Max TokensInteger131072Maximum number of input + output tokens per run.
Reasoning EffortDropdownDefaultControls the depth of reasoning.
VerbosityDropdownDefaultControls the verbosity of responses.
TemperatureFloat0.5Controls response creativity. Range: 0–1.
Top PFloat0.5Controls token sampling diversity. Range: 0–1.
Stream ResponseBooleanOffStream responses token-by-token.
JSON OutputBooleanOffReturn output as structured JSON.
Show SourcesBooleanOffDisplay source documents used for the response.
Toxic Input FiltrationBooleanOffFilter toxic input content.
Safe Context Token WindowBooleanOnAutomatically reduce context to fit within the model’s maximum context window.
Retry On FailureBooleanOffEnable automatic retries when execution fails.
Max RetriesInteger—Maximum retry attempts.
Max Interval b/w re-tryInteger—Interval in milliseconds between retries.
Show Success/Failure OutputsBoolean—Display additional success and failure output ports.

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Best Practices

  • Choose the right Grok variant. Use grok-4-search for queries needing current web data, grok-4-fast-reasoning for speed-optimized reasoning, and grok-4 for general-purpose tasks.
  • Use JSON mode for structured extraction. Enable JSON Output for consistent output when extracting financial data from documents.
  • Monitor token usage. Connect tokens_used and credits_used for cost tracking across high-volume workloads.
  • Enable Safe Context Token Window. This is on by default for xAI — keep it enabled to prevent token-limit errors.
  • Apply PII detection for sensitive data. Enable PII toggles when processing client financial information.

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Common Issues

For troubleshooting common issues with this node, see the Common Issues documentation.