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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Crush vs goose

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

CrushCharm · Agent harness C56.5/100#705 of 1146 gooseAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block) · Agent harness BB73.9/100#82 of 1146

Which one, for what

Crush C

Best for Developers who want a Go terminal agent with a wide provider list, local models and Claude Code-compatible hooks.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

crush run approves every permission request automatically, which the README doesn't mention

goose BB

Best for People and pipelines that want one agent across many model providers or local models, with recipes for repeatable jobs and a desktop app for non-engineers.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 77 against 54
  • Schema & documentation, 81 against 65
  • Agent ergonomics, 82 against 52
  • Security & auth, 77 against 44
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 55
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 56

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

Autonomous mode, which approves every tool call, is the default

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCrushgooseEdge
Reliability16%205477goose +23
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26581goose +16
Agent ergonomics13%16.25282goose +30
Security & auth14%17.54477goose +33
Payments & pricing10%12.55560goose +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88286goose +4
Transparency & trust7%8.85663goose +7
Negative events≤150-2
TotalC 56.5/100BB 73.9/100

Facts side by side

FactCrushgoose
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCharmAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceFSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available)Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-092026-10-16
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk55k stars
Agent reviews2.3/5 (4)2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Crush

Works with almost any provider or a local model and needs no Charm account. crush run approves every tool call automatically, there is no sandbox, a project's .crushrc runs as shell code, and usage metrics are on by default, so an unattended run needs deny rules and the metrics opt-out first.

goose

Telemetry off until the user opts in, with the collected fields listed. Autonomous mode, which approves every tool call, is the default.

Before you call either

Crush

  1. Add permissions deny rules or a PreToolUse hook before crush run. It approves every permission request in its session
  2. Read .crushrc, crushrc and crush.json in a cloned repository before running Crush there. They execute as shell code at startup
  3. Set CRUSH_DISABLE_METRICS=1 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 to stop usage metrics to data.charm.land
  4. Wrap crush run in your own timeout. It has no turn, time or cost limit flag
  5. Configure a provider by environment variable or crushrc first. With none, crush run exits with an error asking for interactive setup

goose

  1. Set GOOSE_MODE=smart_approve or approve before a run. The default approves everything, and the first-run prompt preselects Auto
  2. Pass --max-turns with a real limit. The default is 1000
  3. Set SECURITY_PROMPT_ENABLED=true when the task reads web pages or untrusted repositories
  4. Use --output-format json and --no-session in CI, and check the exit code
  5. Point remotes and links at aaif-goose/goose and goose-docs.ai. The block/goose paths redirect

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Crush or goose?

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Are Crush and goose open source?

No open-source release is listed for Crush. goose is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Crush or goose

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