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About Goose

Goose is a general-purpose AI agent that runs on the user's machine. It can be used for research, writing, automation, data analysis, or other tasks, not just coding. It is available as a native desktop app, a CLI, and an API. It is built in Rust. It connects to extensions via the Model Context Protocol open standard. It works with multiple LLM providers.

Products

  • Desktop app: A native application for macOS, Linux, and Windows.
  • CLI: A command-line interface for terminal workflows.
  • API: An API to embed goose anywhere.
  • Recipes: Portable YAML configs that capture workflows, including instructions, extensions, parameters, and subrecipes.
  • MCP Apps: A feature allowing extensions to render interactive UIs, such as buttons, forms, and visualizations, inside goose Desktop.
  • Subagents: A feature that spawns independent subagents to handle tasks in parallel.

Used for

  • Conducting research
  • Writing content
  • Automating tasks
  • Analyzing data

From Goose's own website, read 2026-10-23. How we build listings.

How to evaluate Infrastructure as Code

This is how the CIOPages Research Team evaluates this category. It is not an assessment of Goose. It comes from our Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Platforms buyer guide.

25%
Language & Authoring Model
Declarative DSL (HCL) vs. general-purpose language (TypeScript, Python, Go, C#); readability for reviewers vs. expressive power (loops, conditionals, abstractions); module/component reuse and registry maturity; testing and IDE support; learning curve for the people who will actually write infrastructure
20%
State Management & Drift
Where state is stored, remote-state locking to prevent concurrent-apply corruption, state encryption and secret handling, plan/preview fidelity, drift detection and continuous reconciliation, import of existing resources, and blast-radius controls on apply
20%
Policy-as-Code & Governance
OPA/Rego and Sentinel support, pre-apply guardrails (block non-compliant resources, mandatory tags, region/cost limits), RBAC and SSO/SAML/SCIM, audit logging, approval workflows, and integration with cost-estimation and security scanning in the pipeline
15%
Provider Ecosystem & Portability
Breadth and quality of providers/resource coverage, day-one support for new cloud services, multi-cloud and on-prem reach, third-party SaaS providers, and how locked-in the resulting code is to one vendor or one cloud
10%
Collaboration & Workflow (TACOS)
Run orchestration and queuing, VCS/PR-driven plans, stack dependencies, self-service environments with TTL/ephemeral teardown, drift remediation workflows, and whether you self-host in CI (Atlantis-style) or buy a managed platform
10%
Licensing & Project Health
License (open-source MPL/Apache vs. source-available BUSL vs. proprietary), governance and ownership after recent M&A, release cadence and roadmap, community/foundation backing (CNCF, Linux Foundation), and how easily you could exit or fork

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Quick Facts

block.github.io/goose
CategoryDevOps & Platform Engineering
SubcategoryInfrastructure as Code
DeploymentDesktop application, CLI, API

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