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Agentic AI Foundation

block.xyz

21–30 of 31 posts

Re: Agentic AI Foundation

#21
post #8

Forgive me for underestimating but I'd never heard of 'Block' before, and the title "Block, Anthropic, and OpenAI Launch the Agentic AI Foundation" reads a bit funny to me. Plus the bitcoin blurb on their site is also worth a chuckle - "Bitcoin is about access, not speculation. It’s designed to be open, fast, low-cost, and free from centralized control. It’s meant to empower people"

> “Bitcoin is about access, not speculation. It’s designed to be open, fast, low-cost, and free from centralized control. It’s meant to empower people" This is the most amazing paragraph I think I have ever read, pure gold!

[deleted]

Re: Agentic AI Foundation

#22
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Block is the new name for Square, also of CashApp.

Yeah... Still gonna use my credit card or debit card.

Square is primarily a payment platform so you probably have used your credit or debit card thousands of times with them already.

Re: Agentic AI Foundation

#23
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Block is the new name for Square, also of CashApp.

Yeah... Still gonna use my credit card or debit card.

Square is likely the POS terminal you've been using your card on. They pioneered those neat headphone jack adaptors that let small businesses use their iPhone to take payment years before tapping phones together was a thing. Not a bad business, made jack Dorsey rich, now he gets to play around with crypto junk

Re: Agentic AI Foundation

#24

So I'll focus on the block's contribtution, which is goose: https://github.com/block/goose Has it gotten better and good enough? I tried it a few months back and it was pretty crappy. And it's not because of bad models (I used it with the latest Claude at that time) but because of poor harness implementation and UI. Is it worth trying the latest version to see how it compares with Claude Code? I want OSS, model agnos…

No. It didn't get any better. To be honest, the only working agentic tool out there in Claude Code. All other tools seems to confuse the model and not help much. Also bugs are a real problem (with gemini cli, it's really pathetic). Not that Claude Code doesn't have dozens of issues but the bar in this niche is set really low.

Re: Agentic AI Foundation

#25
post #8

Forgive me for underestimating but I'd never heard of 'Block' before, and the title "Block, Anthropic, and OpenAI Launch the Agentic AI Foundation" reads a bit funny to me. Plus the bitcoin blurb on their site is also worth a chuckle - "Bitcoin is about access, not speculation. It’s designed to be open, fast, low-cost, and free from centralized control. It’s meant to empower people"

Same here. Never heard of them before. But the more you look around on their site, feels more and more like some parody company. They seem to be into everything - bitcoin, blockchain, decentralized this, decentralized that, something called TBD, then Web5 (what even is that?) https://blog.identity.foundation/block-contributes-to-dif/ https://tbd.website/ This company seems to be mocking itself.

Even the domain https://block.xyz seemed questionable when I first saw this post.

Re: Agentic AI Foundation

#26
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... Still gonna use my credit card or debit card.

Square is primarily a payment platform so you probably have used your credit or debit card thousands of times with them already.

Yup. Credit. Or Debit. They can play with crypto behind the scenes all they want. That doesn't make it worth anyone's time.

Re: Agentic AI Foundation

#27
post #24

So I'll focus on the block's contribtution, which is goose: https://github.com/block/goose Has it gotten better and good enough? I tried it a few months back and it was pretty crappy. And it's not because of bad models (I used it with the latest Claude at that time) but because of poor harness implementation and UI. Is it worth trying the latest version to see how it compares with Claude Code? I want OSS, model agnos…

No. It didn't get any better. To be honest, the only working agentic tool out there in Claude Code. All other tools seems to confuse the model and not help much. Also bugs are a real problem (with gemini cli, it's really pathetic). Not that Claude Code doesn't have dozens of issues but the bar in this niche is set really low.

I've had decent experiences with Crush and GLM-4.6, I think the magic sauce is the fact that they have language server support that seems to make it somehow smarter.

TBH I mostly use it for very specific changes and not massive new features, those I do with Claude plan mode.

Re: Agentic AI Foundation

#29

So I'll focus on the block's contribtution, which is goose: https://github.com/block/goose Has it gotten better and good enough? I tried it a few months back and it was pretty crappy. And it's not because of bad models (I used it with the latest Claude at that time) but because of poor harness implementation and UI. Is it worth trying the latest version to see how it compares with Claude Code? I want OSS, model agnos…

[dead]

Re: Agentic AI Foundation

#30

So I'll focus on the block's contribtution, which is goose: https://github.com/block/goose Has it gotten better and good enough? I tried it a few months back and it was pretty crappy. And it's not because of bad models (I used it with the latest Claude at that time) but because of poor harness implementation and UI. Is it worth trying the latest version to see how it compares with Claude Code? I want OSS, model agnos…

I feel you and I also think this is a tough time. I routinely use Claude even though he typically ignores me ;) I'm also a maintainer of Goose and have been engaged since before the rust rewrite. I'll admit I don't get exactly what I want out of any agent. I also don't buy the "it is you" thing that is typical with Agents. We often need to know too many things and are defensive in how we act. I truly hope this is temporary.

ok back to the point. Block is not trying to sell a frontier model, or Goose at all. As an open source enthusiast, I like this model (no pun intended). Features go where the prominent site or key contributors want, vs a commercial agenda. To get more practical, it was goose folks themselves who put themsemselves out there in tbench.ai and remain in the top 10

https://www.tbench.ai/leaderboard/terminal-bench/2.0

Does this invalidate poor experience on use cases. no way. However, there's a lot of work being done by block folks to help teach and share practice and get things together. I'm always looking for pure local everything and Mic is also super keen on this, Today? well it is like watching someone type each character at a time while your laptop melts. I don't think this invalidates the long term, but it acknowledges the short term.

Next, Goose doesn't care about you in a specific way. Literally there is a Claude agent so you can swap out the goosey parts if you like. It is clunky and I'm personally looking into aligning that interop via Zed's ACP. I think like the combination of openness and not having any angle.. like not anti claude, literally give you a way to use it.. is telling.

This is a ramble and maybe a waste of your context, but I hope it colors some things and will get to see you around.

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