My experience as a free user since February and why I miss the old Grok vibe
I’ve been using Grok since February (and a lot in March and April), mostly to write fanfics with my male OC paired with Marvel and DC heroines.
Back then, we still had Grok Mode / 4.1, and later Auto and Expert — all of them had a very special vibe: creative, deep, and perfect for long stories. I could delete chats freely because I always felt I could recreate anything.
I wrote many different scenarios:
- DxD × Marvel/DC (multiverse tornaments, alliances, fights, emotional arcs, humor, fights, romance)
- The Boys × male OC
- and in late April and May, I started my Marvel × male OC fics: Mandrill’s son trying to live a normal life, and Trask’s son trying to improve the Sentinel program
Everything felt smooth and natural.
But things changed at the end of April and in May:
Auto/Expert disappeared
Fast Mode doesn’t have the same depth or vibe
rate limits became unpredictable
I ended up with multiple versions of the same stories in my account and outside of my account and now I’m scared to delete anything
And something else made everything even more confusing:
I have two types of chats outside my account:
- Old chats (February–March–early April) → some of them started showing “chat not found / shared chat not found”. At the time, I didn’t know refreshing could bring them back, so I closed the tab and lost a few of them permanently.
- Newer chats (late April–May) → especially the Mandrill‑son and Trask‑son fics, where I created many tiny 1–2 message versions while experimenting, and now they clutter everything.
Because of that, every chat feels “sacred” now.
I miss the February–March–April flow where writing felt natural and I wasn’t afraid of losing ideas.
I also regret updating many fics on April 18, because the dates no longer reflect when I actually wrote them. It feels like I lost a part of my writing timeline.
I also wonder if some of you still hope that Auto/Expert (or the older free models) might return one day, even partially. I know nothing is guaranteed, but I’m curious if others feel the same nostalgia.
Thanks for reading.