xAI announced on 2026-05-16 (https://x.ai/news/grok-hermes) that X Premium
subscriptions now work in Hermes Agent. The hint we shipped in PR #26644
asserted the opposite ("X Premium+ does NOT include xAI API access — only
standalone SuperGrok subscribers can use this provider"), which would now
misdirect Premium+ users who hit any other 403 (no Grok sub at all, wrong
tier, exhausted quota) into thinking they need to switch subscriptions
when their sub is in fact valid.
Remove _decorate_xai_entitlement_error and its two call sites in
_summarize_api_error. xAI's own body text already says "Manage subscriptions
at https://grok.com/?_s=usage" — surface that verbatim and let xAI's wording
do the diagnosis.
The _is_entitlement_failure guard (which prevents credential-pool refresh
loops on entitlement 403s) and the reasoning-replay gating for xai-oauth
are unrelated and untouched.
Update tests to assert the body still surfaces verbatim and that no
Hermes-side editorializing is appended.
The #1 confusing cause of the xAI 403 (per Teknium): X Premium+
subscribers see Grok inside the X app and assume API access is
included. It is NOT — only standalone SuperGrok subscribers can use
xai-oauth with Hermes today. Without calling this out, every Premium+
user hits the 403 with no idea why.
PR #26666's neutral 4-cause list was correct but buried the most
common cause. Lead with the Premium+ gotcha, then list the other
possibilities (no subscription, wrong tier, exhausted quota) as
fallbacks. Same neutral framing — does not accuse anyone of being
unsubscribed.
PR #26644 confidently told users "xAI OAuth account lacks SuperGrok /
X Premium entitlement" on any 403 from xAI's permission-denied surface.
But that body is returned for at least four distinct causes that
Hermes cannot distinguish from the wire:
* Account has no Grok subscription at all
* Account has SuperGrok but the tier doesn't include the requested
model (e.g. grok-4.3 needs SuperGrok Heavy)
* Monthly quota for the subscribed tier is exhausted
* SuperGrok is active but the API access add-on isn't enabled
Don Piedro pushed back that he IS subscribed yet still hit this.
Picking the worst-case interpretation ("you're not subscribed")
reads as wrong and insulting to subscribers, and points them at a
fix they already did.
New wording lists all 4 possibilities and points at
https://grok.com/?_s=usage where the user can check which applies.
The detection logic and credential-pool short-circuit (PR #26664)
are unchanged — only the user-facing wording is rephrased.
Don Piedro's 18-minute hang on grok-4.3 traced to two issues PR #26644
didn't cover:
- _recover_with_credential_pool classifies 403 as FailoverReason.auth
and calls pool.try_refresh_current(). For xAI OAuth on an
unsubscribed account, refresh succeeds (mints a new token from the
same account) but the next API call 403s with the same entitlement
error. Result: infinite refresh → retry → 403 loop until Ctrl+C
(1133s in Don's log). New _is_entitlement_failure(error_context,
status_code) detects the subscription-shape body ("do not have an
active Grok subscription" / "out of available resources" + grok /
"does not have permission" + grok) and short-circuits recovery so
_summarize_api_error surfaces PR #26644's friendly hint.
- grok-4.3 resolved to 256k via the grok-4 catch-all in
DEFAULT_CONTEXT_LENGTHS. Per docs.x.ai/developers/models/grok-4.3
the model ships with 1M context. Add explicit grok-4.3 entry
before the grok-4 fallback (longest-first substring matching
ensures grok-4.3 and grok-4.3-latest both land on the new value).
Tests: 8 new (23 total in test_codex_xai_oauth_recovery.py).
E2E verified Don's 100-iteration loop bails out with 0 refresh calls
while genuine auth failures still refresh once and recover.
Three fixes for the May 2026 xAI OAuth (SuperGrok / X Premium) rollout
failures:
- _run_codex_stream: when openai SDK raises RuntimeError("Expected to
have received `response.created` before `<type>`"), retry once then
fall back to responses.create(stream=True) — same path used for
missing-response.completed postlude. Fallback surfaces the real
provider error with body+status_code intact. Also fixes#8133
(response.in_progress prelude on custom relays) and #14634
(codex.rate_limits prelude on codex-lb).
- _summarize_api_error: when error body matches xAI's entitlement
shape, append a one-line hint pointing to https://grok.com and
/model. Once-only, applies to both auxiliary warnings and
main-loop error surfacing.
- _chat_messages_to_responses_input: new is_xai_responses kwarg
drops replayed codex_reasoning_items (encrypted_content) before
they reach xAI. Also drops reasoning.encrypted_content from the
xAI include array. Native Codex behavior unchanged. Grok still
reasons natively each turn; coherence rides on visible message
text alone.
Closes#8133, #14634.
