[HN Gopher] Goose: An open-source, extensible AI agent that goes...
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Goose: An open-source, extensible AI agent that goes beyond code
suggestions
Author : sansui12
Score : 233 points
Date : 2025-01-30 16:27 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (block.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (block.github.io)
| juunpp wrote:
| It advertises that it runs locally and that it is "extensible"
| but then requires you to set up a remote/external provider as the
| first step of installation? That's a rather weird use of "local"
| and "extensible". Do words mean anything anymore?
| kylecazar wrote:
| Yeah, they seem to be referring to the Goose agent/CLI that are
| local. Not models themselves.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| You can run ollama, so no, not only Goose itself.
| demarq wrote:
| Did you not see Ollama?
| tonygiorgio wrote:
| Can't you just run ollama and provide it a localhost endpoint?
| I dont think its within scope to reproduce the whole local LLM
| stack when anyone wanting to do this today can easily use
| existing better tools to solve that part of it.
| raincole wrote:
| You went as far as checking how it works (thus "requires you to
| set up a remote/external provider as the first step").
|
| But you didn't bother checking the very next section on side
| bar, Supported LLM Providers, where ollama is listed.
|
| The attention span issue today is amusing.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| > The attention span issue today is amusing.
|
| I find it rather depressing. I know it's a more complex
| thing, but it really feels irl like people have no time for
| anything past a few seconds before moving onto the next
| thing. Shows in the results of their work too often as well.
| Some programming requires very long attention span and if you
| don't have any, it's not going to be good.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| But people really have no time. There is only one brain and
| thousands of AI startups pitching something every day.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Yeah, don't need to try any until everyone says 'you have
| to'. Which happened with Aider and later Cline & Cursor.
| unification_fan wrote:
| But this is an elevator pitch. I didn't come here to be
| marketed to, yet I am being marketed to.
|
| So if you're going to market something to me at least do it
| right. My attention span is low because I don't really give
| a shit about this.
| hiyer wrote:
| You can use it with ollama too
| XorNot wrote:
| I don't know how useful this is, but my immediate reaction to the
| animation on the front page was "that's literally worse then the
| alternative".
|
| Because the example given was "change the color of a component".
|
| Now, it's obviously fairly impressive that a machine can go from
| plain text to identifying a react component and editing it...but
| the process to do so literally doesn't save me any time.
|
| "Can you change the current colour of headercomponent.tsx to
| <some color> and increase the size vertical to 15% of vh" is a
| longer to type sentence then the time it would take to just open
| the file and do that.
|
| Moreover, the example is in a very "standard" format. What
| happens if I'm not using styled components? What happens if that
| color is set from a function? In fact none of the examples shown
| seem gamechanging in anyway (i.e. the Confluence example is also
| what a basic script could do, or a workflow, or anything else -
| and is still essentially "two mouseclicks" rather then writing
| out a longer English sentence and then I would guess, waiting
| substantially more time for inferrence to run.
| taneq wrote:
| On the one hand, this isn't a great example for you because you
| already knew how to do that. There's probably no good way to
| automate trivial changes that you can make off the top of your
| head, and have it be faster than just doing it yourself.
|
| I've found LLMs most useful for doing things with unfamiliar
| tooling, where you know what you want to achieve but not
| exactly how to do it.
|
| On the other hand, it's an okay test case because you can
| easily verify the results.
| pjm331 wrote:
| Yeah the fact that just composing the first prompt would take
| me longer than just doing the thing is my biggest blocker to
| using any of these tools on a regular basis
| ehnto wrote:
| Which is also assuming it gets it right the first prompt, and
| not 15 minutes of prompt hacking later, giving up and doing
| it the old fashioned way anyway.
|
| The risk of wasted time is higher than the proposed benefit,
| for most of my current use cases. I don't do heaps of glue
| code, it's mostly business logic, and one off fixes, so I
| have not found LLMs to be useful day to day at work.
|
| Where it has been useful is when I need to do a task with
| tech I don't use often. I usually know exactly what I want to
| do but don't have the myriad arcane details. A great example
| would be needing to do a complex MongoDB query when I don't
| normally use Mongo.
| oxidant wrote:
| Cursor + Sonnet has been great for scaffolding tests.
|
| I'll stub out tests (just a name and `assert true`) and
| have it fill them in. It usually gets them wrong, but I can
| fix one and then have it update the rest to match.
|
| Not perfect, but beats writing all the tests myself.
| robertwt7 wrote:
| I agree with the process not saving any of our time. however
| aren't examples supposed to be simple?
|
| Take it from Aider example: https://github.com/Aider-AI/aider
| It asked to add a param and typing to a function. Would that
| save us more time? I don't think so. but it's a good peek of
| what it can do
|
| just like any other hello world example i suppose
| two_handfuls wrote:
| Examples are supposed to be simple when they illustrate a
| process we already know works.
|
| With AI the challenge is that we need to convince the reader
| that the tool will work. So that calls for a different kind
| of example.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| If you don't know how implement it how can you be sure LLM
| will do it correctly?
|
| If the task is not simple then break it into simple tasks.
| Then each of them is as easy as color change.
| alexkehayias wrote:
| So I gave goose a whirl and I actually really like the approach
| they are taking, especially because I use emacs and not vscode. I
| would recommend people try it out on an existing project--the
| results are quite good for small, additive features and even ones
| that are full stack.
|
| Here's a short writeup of my notes from trying to use it
| https://notes.alexkehayias.com/goose-coding-ai-agent/
| terhechte wrote:
| Which LLM did you use with Goose? That really affects the
| quality of the outcome
| alexkehayias wrote:
| I'm using gpt-4o which I think is the default for the OpenAI
| configuration.
|
| Haven't tried other models yet but old like to see how
| o3-mini performs once it's been added.
| alexjhancock wrote:
| Hi - Alex here from the Goose team. We do already support
| o3-mini. If you're using the OpenAI provider you can enter
| that model in the settings screen of the app. Let me know
| if you have any trouble.
| grimgrin wrote:
| this is the page i'd link to
|
| https://block.github.io/goose/docs/goose-architecture/
| aantix wrote:
| How does this compare to Cline or Cursor's Composer agent?
| bckr wrote:
| Today I decided that what I need is:
|
| - prompt from command line directly to Claude
|
| - suggestions dumped into a file under ./tmp/ (ignored by git)
|
| - iterate on those files
|
| - shuttle test results over to Claude
|
| Getting those files merged with the source files is also
| important, but I'm not confident in a better way than copy-
| pasting at this point.
| vessenes wrote:
| Aider is fantastic. Worth a look.
| bckr wrote:
| I've been playing with it and I don't like it that much? I'm
| not sure why. It feels a little buggy and like it's doing too
| much.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| You're being downvoted for some reason but I feel the same.
| It's cool tech but I've found I often need to revert
| changes. It's far too aggressive with tweaking files. Maybe
| I can adjust in the settings, idk. Also, it's expensive as
| hell to run with Claude sonnet. Cost me like $0.01 per
| action on a small project, insane. At this point I still
| prefer the chat interface.
| extr wrote:
| You can basically get the same experience as aider with
| an MCP server like https://github.com/rusiaaman/wcgw.
| It's not perfect - sometimes has trouble with exact
| syntax of find/replace. But it's free to use up to your
| regular Claude subscription usage limit. I actually use
| it more than Cursor, because it's easier to flip back and
| forth between architecting/editing.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Thanks! I'll take a look at this. It always kind of
| annoyed me to pay for API credits on top of a
| subscription, lol.
| M4v3R wrote:
| $0.01 per action that can potentially save you tens of
| minutes to hours of work sounds like a pretty good deal
| to me, if I compare this to my hourly wage.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > $0.01 per action that can potentially save you tens of
| minutes to hours of work sounds like a pretty good deal
| to me
|
| Save _tens_ of hours in one commit?! No model is this
| good yet[1] - especially not Aider with its recommended
| models. I fully agree with parent - current SoTA models
| require lots of handholding in the domains I care about,
| and the AI chat /pairing setup works much better compared
| to the AI creating entire commits/PRs before a human gets
| to look at it.
|
| 1. If they were, Zuckerberg would have already announced
| another round of layoffs.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Ten hours in one commit? Nope, not yet, but it works
| great to test out ideas and get unstuck when trying to
| decide how to proceed. Instead of having to choose, just
| do both or at least try 1 right away instead of bike-
| shedding.
|
| I often get hung up on UI, I can't make a decision on
| what I think will look decent and so I just sort of lock
| up. Aider lets me focus on the logic and then have the
| LLM spit out the UI. Since I've given up on projects
| before due to the UI aspect (lose interest because I
| don't feel like I'm making progress, or get overwhelmed
| by all the UI I'll need to write) this is a huge boon to
| me.
|
| I'm not incapable of writing UI, I'm just slower at it so
| Aider is like having a wiz junior developer who can crank
| out UI when I need it. I'm even fine to rewrite every
| line of the UI by hand before "shipping", the LLM just
| helps me not get stuck on what it should look like. It
| lets me focus on the feature.
| joshstrange wrote:
| $0.01 per action? Yeah, and I've gotten up to 10 cents or
| so I think in a "single" action but so what? The most
| I've ever spent with it in one go has been like $5 for a
| couple hours (maybe even 6-8) of on and off usage. That
| $5 was completely worth it.
|
| Also you can use local models if you want it to be
| "free".
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| A running total of the "cost of my side project" doesn't
| feel particularly good.
| vessenes wrote:
| Interesting. I occasionally feel that way with Claude as
| the backend. Still the best backend that's reliable,
| although o3-mini-high in architecture mode with Claude is
| very good.
|
| I find Claude wants to edit files that I don't like to be
| edited often. Two ways I deal with that - first, you can
| import 'read only' files, which is super helpful for
| focusing. Second, you can use a chat mode first to talk
| over plans, and when you're happy say "go".
|
| I think the thing to do is try and use it at a fairly high
| level, then drop down and critique. Essentially use it as a
| team of impressive motivation and mid quality.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| There are many (ignored) requests, to, like cursor, copilot
| and cline, automatically pick the files without having to
| specify them. Not having that makes it much worse than those
| others. I was a fan before the others but having to add your
| files is not a thing anymore.
| bckr wrote:
| Hmm, I want to add my own files. This is because in my
| workflow I often turn to the web UI in order to get a fresh
| context.
|
| I do like the idea of letting the model ask for source
| code.
|
| It's all about attention / context.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| But one does not exclude the other; some like one some
| like the other. I am used to Cline now and it's pretty
| good at picking the correct files, however, I get better
| results out of aider once the files are in.
| bckr wrote:
| I've almost finished an interactive file selector inspired by
| git add interactive, with the addition of a tree display.
|
| I'm giving myself the option to output collated code to a file,
| or copy it to clipboard, or just hold onto it for the next
| prompt.
|
| I know aider does this stuff, but because I'm automating my own
| workflow, it's worth doing it myself.
| lordswork wrote:
| I'm building this for myself because I want it too. I recommend
| you do the same, because it's been really fun to build and
| teaches you a lot about what LLMs can and cannot do well.
|
| I plan to share it on Github, but waiting for my employer's
| internal review process to let me open source it as my own
| project, since they can legally claim all IP developed by me
| while employed there.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I also built this for myself, and I really do suggest it as a
| good project to get a grounded idea of what models can
| handle.
|
| Mainly - tool calling support just merged in llama.cpp
| (https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/9639) this week,
| and it's been a fun exercise to put local LLMs through the
| wringer to see how they do at handling it.
|
| It's been a mixture of "surprisingly well" and "really
| badly".
| dbdoskey wrote:
| You should try cline. I found it with Anthropic to be
| invaluable.
| esafak wrote:
| Are people finding agent frameworks useful or they are
| unnecessary dependencies like Langchain?
| Keyframe wrote:
| I don't know if anyone find this useful, but it seems rather
| useless / not working? I tried with numerous online and local
| llms for good measure. I installed that computerController
| extension and tried couple of dozens different versions of open a
| website (url) in a browser and save a screenshot. Most of the
| time it wouldn't even open a website, and I never got a
| screenshot. At best it did open a website once and saved a html
| (even though I asked a screenshot); and that one was unique in a
| bunch when it did something instead of complaining it can't find
| AppleScript or whatever on a linux machine.. I qualified the ask
| by telling it it's on linux. It managed to find which distro it
| was on even. Really weird overall.
| DrewHintz wrote:
| I've had luck with a workflow similar to:
|
| git clone a repo
|
| Open goose with that directory
|
| Instruct it to discover what the repo does
|
| Ask it to make changes to the code, being detailed with my
| instructions.
|
| I haven't tried computerController, only Goose's main
| functionality.
| goldenManatee wrote:
| Regarding the "Extensible," doesn't that completely moot its
| whole point?
| pzo wrote:
| This looks very promising. I only played a little bit yesterday
| but they really need to polish the UI. Comparing to desktop
| version of chatgpt or perplexity they are in much lower league.
| Some feedback for team:
|
| 1) use better font and size
|
| 2) allow to adjust shortcuts and have nice defaults with easy
| change
|
| 3) integrate with local whisper model so I can type with voice
| triggered with global shortcut
|
| 4) change background to blend with default system OS theme so we
| don't have useless ugly top bar and ugly bottom bar
|
| 5) shortcuts buttons to easily copy part of conversion or full
| conversation, activate web search, star conversion so easy to
| find in history etc.
|
| They should get more inspiration from
| raycast/perlexity/chatgpt/arcbrowser/warpai ui/cursor
| po wrote:
| Have many other projects put MPC servers
| (https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction) to use since it
| was announced? I haven't seen very many others using it yet.
| paulgb wrote:
| Cursor also just got support this week. Overall it's still
| early (MCP only came out a couple of months ago) but seeing
| multiple clients that allow it to be used with non-Anthropic
| models, and getting good results, makes me bullish for MCP.
|
| My colleague has working on an MCP server that runs Python code
| in a sandbox (through https://forevervm.com, shameless plug).
| I've been using Goose a lot since it was announced last week
| for testing and it's rough in some spots but the results have
| been good.
| bArray wrote:
| Running locally is such an important feature, running elsewhere
| is an instant non-starter for me. I also want the LLM to be able
| to read the code to build an in-context solution, but not be able
| to make changes unless they are strictly accepted.
| letniq wrote:
| Is it the same as ollama?
| 93po wrote:
| I'm confused what this does that Cursor doesn't. The example it
| shows on the front page is something Cursor can also easily do.
| netfl0 wrote:
| Open source licensing where the limit is on the ai-backend
| right?
| lordswork wrote:
| The one that stands out most to me is that it doesn't bundle
| the AI features with the editor. This is a standalone
| application that runs on the side of your editor/tools of
| choice.
| betimsl wrote:
| Does anyone know alternatives to this? GUI Frontend for various
| AI providers? (incl. ollama, etc)
| register wrote:
| But... how does it work? The documentation is really confusing .
| How to make it aware of code file and project structure?
| DrewHintz wrote:
| I tell it to discover that itself by asking leading questions:
| "What does this repo do?" "How do you run its unit tests?"
| "What does file foo do?"
| yencabulator wrote:
| This is amusing/worrying.
|
| > Make sure to confirm all changes with me before applying.
|
| https://block.github.io/goose/docs/guides/using-goosehints
|
| So, we're supposed to rely on LLM not hallucinating that it is
| allowed to do what it wants?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >So, we're supposed to rely on LLM not hallucinating that it is
| allowed to do what it wants?
|
| Yes. Frontier models have been moving at light speed over the
| last year. Hallucinations are almost completely solved,
| particularly with Anthropic models.
|
| It won't be long before statements like this sound the same as
| "so you mean I have to trust that my client will always have a
| stable internet connection to reach out to this remote server
| for data?".
| feznyng wrote:
| This is missing the human language ambiguity problem. If you
| don't perfectly specify your requirements and it
| misinterprets what you're asking for that's going to be a
| problem regardless of how smart it is. This is fine with code
| editing since you've got version control and not so great
| when running commands in your terminal that can't be as
| trivially reverted.
|
| Besides that, you can absolutely still trick top of the line
| models: https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2024/claude-
| computer-us...
|
| Hallucination might be getting better, gullibility less so.
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