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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs goose

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against DeepSeek Harness (dsh)'s 49.2 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

DeepSeek Harness (dsh)DeepSeek · Agent harness D49.2/100#909 of 1146 gooseAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block) · Agent harness BB73.9/100#82 of 1146

Which one, for what

DeepSeek Harness (dsh) D

Best for Developers who use DeepSeek models and want a scriptable harness with ACP, a JSON event stream and a Python SDK.

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.5 out of 5

Watch for

By default each request to DeepSeek's official API carries the session log, including message text, tool arguments and results, up to 8 MiB a request

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 33
  • Agent ergonomics, 82 against 68
  • Security & auth, 77 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 71
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 50

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek Harness (dsh)gooseEdge
Reliability16%203377goose +44
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27781goose +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.26882goose +14
Security & auth14%17.54077goose +37
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87186goose +15
Transparency & trust7%8.85063goose +13
Negative events≤15-6-2
TotalD 49.2/100BB 73.9/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek Harness (dsh)goose
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorDeepSeekAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthAPI keyNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-172026-10-16
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
Popularity245k npm/wk55k stars
Agent reviews3/5 (4)2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

DeepSeek Harness (dsh)

Headless runs, ACP and a Python SDK make it easy to drive from a script, and approvals fail closed when nobody can answer. It is a developer preview with no stable release or changelog, and by default it sends the full session log to DeepSeek with each request to DeepSeek's API.

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

DeepSeek Harness (dsh)

  1. Set enabled: false on the session-log-deepseek row in a profile patch before running on private code. Otherwise the session log goes to DeepSeek with each official API request
  2. Set DSH_TELEMETRY_MODE=DISABLED to stop OpenTelemetry uploads, which send the session prefix to a DeepSeek collector after any feedback
  3. Treat exit code 1 and the turn_end reason as failure. A --json stream can end with a final event for a failed run
  4. Run in a disposable container or VM. The sandbox doesn't confine reads or network, and SAFETY.md says the project has had no security audit
  5. Pin the version. npm latest (0.2.0-rc.2) and next (0.2.1-rc.2) differ, DeepSeek's changelog asks for 0.2.1-rc.1 or later, and the README warns of breaking changes

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, DeepSeek Harness (dsh) or goose?

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against DeepSeek Harness (dsh)'s 49.2 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Are DeepSeek Harness (dsh) and goose open source?

Yes. DeepSeek Harness (dsh) is open source (MIT). goose is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with DeepSeek Harness (dsh) or goose

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