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Head to head · Agent harness · October 2026 research run

goose vs Prime Agent

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Prime Agent's 60.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent harness.

gooseAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block) · Agent harness BB73.9/100#64 of 578 Prime AgentPrime Intellect · Agent harness C60.5/100#317 of 578

Which one, for what

goose BB

Good 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 65
  • Schema & documentation, 81 against 42
  • Agent ergonomics, 82 against 73
  • Security & auth, 77 against 50
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 79

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

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

Prime Agent C

Good for Long-running research and coding work where one model drives subagents, schedules and goals from code, and where the owner can isolate the machine.

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

Watch for

No approval prompts and no sandbox. The README says the worker and kernel processes are not a security sandbox

Score by category

CategoryWeight this rungoosePrime AgentEdge
Reliability16%207765goose +12
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28142goose +39
Agent ergonomics13%16.28273goose +9
Security & auth14%17.57750goose +27
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88679goose +7
Transparency & trust7%8.86364Prime Agent +1
Negative events≤15-20
Total73.9 · BB60.5 · C

Facts side by side

FactgoosePrime Agent
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block)Prime Intellect
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-232026-10-07
Terms last updatedno document linkedno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity55k stars22k stars
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)none

Verdicts

goose

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

Prime Agent

Budgets for turns, tokens and time bound an autonomous run, and sessions survive a closed terminal through a supervising daemon. Model-written Python and shell commands run with the user's rights, with no approval step and no sandbox, and the Rust build on the main branch ships only as nightly betas.

Before you call either

goose

  1. Set GOOSE_MODE=smart_approve or approve before a run. The default approves everything
  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

Prime Agent

  1. Run it in a disposable clone, container or VM. It executes model-written Python and shell commands with the user's rights and asks nothing first
  2. Set PRIME_AGENT_TELEMETRY=0 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 before the first run if usage metrics must not leave the machine
  3. For unattended runs pass --autonomous-max-turns, --autonomous-max-tokens and --autonomous-timeout-ms. Reaching a limit does not mean the task succeeded
  4. Headless use is -p with --mode json per the argument parser. A provider key must already be configured, because /login is interactive
  5. The -t/--tools, -nt/--no-tools and -nbt/--no-builtin-tools flags were removed and now fail as unknown options

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, goose or Prime Agent?

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Prime Agent's 60.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Are goose and Prime Agent open source?

Yes. goose is open source (Apache-2.0). Prime Agent is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with goose or Prime Agent

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