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How I Manage Localhost Port Conflicts With an AI Agent

· 3 min read
Rizel Scarlett
Staff Developer Advocate

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Localhost Ports Hoarding

I'm perpetually drowning in open tabs. Yes, I do need Bluesky, ChatGPT, Claude, Goose, Cursor, Discord, Slack, Netflix, and Google Docs all open at the same time. I've learned that tab management isn't my only vice.

"Hi, my name is Rizel, and I'm a localhost ports hoarder. 👋🏿"

Goose Gets a Driver's License!

· 6 min read
W Ian Douglas
Staff Developer Advocate

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I taught Goose how to drive (a rover)

Goose has no hands, no eyes, and no spatial awareness, but it can drive a rover!

I came across a demo video from Deemkeen, where he used Goose to control a Makeblock mbot2 rover using natural language commands like "drive forward/backward," "beep," and "turn left/right" powered by a Java-based MCP server and MQTT.

Inspired and excited to take it further, I taught the rover to spin, blink colorful lights, and help me take over the world!

Goose and Qwen3 for Local Execution

· 3 min read
Michael Neale
Principal Engineer

local AI agent

A couple of weeks back, Qwen 3 launched with a raft of capabilities and sizes. This model showed promise and even in very compact form, such as 8B parameters and 4bit quantization, was able to do tool calling successfully with goose. Even multi turn tool calling.

I haven't seen this work at such a scaled down model so far, so this is really impressive and bodes well for both this model, but also future open weight models both large and small. I would expect the Qwen3 larger models work quite well on various tasks but even this small one I found useful.

4 Things You Need to Know Before Using Goose

· 5 min read
Ebony Louis
Developer Advocate

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So you’ve heard about Goose. Maybe you saw a livestream, someone on your team mentioned it, or you just stumbled into our corner of the internet while trying to automate your dev setup. Either way—love that for you.

Goose is a local, open source AI agent that can automate tasks, interact with your codebase, and connect to a growing ecosystem of tools. But before you hit install, here are four things you should know to get the most out of it.

How One Contribution Can Spark Many Wins

· 3 min read
Tania Chakraborty
Senior Technical Community Manager

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The only way to discover how much of an impact your contributions can make is to submit them and hope for the best. Sometimes, what feels like "just a small fix" can end up reshaping an open source project or inspiring a brand new feature. Here's how one of our top contributors turned a small build fix into important improvements for the goose experience.

MCP Is Rewriting the Rules of API Integration

· 10 min read
W Ian Douglas
Staff Developer Advocate

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As developers, we're always looking for ways to build more efficient, scalable, and intelligent applications. For years, RESTful APIs have been our go-to for connecting services. Here are some ways you can integrate AI agents and MCP into your existing API infrastructure to make it smarter, more efficient, and easier to maintain.

MCP in the Enterprise: Real World Adoption at Block

· 6 min read
Angie Jones
Head of Developer Relations

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At Block, we've been exploring how to make AI agents genuinely useful in a business setting. Not just for demos or prototypes, but for real, everyday work. As one of the early collaborators on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), we partnered with Anthropic to help shape and define the open standard that bridges AI agents with real-world tools and data.

MCP lets AI agents interact with APIs, tools, and data systems through a common interface. It eliminates the guesswork by exposing deterministic tool definitions, so the agent doesn't have to guess how to call an API. Instead, it focuses on what we actually want... results!

While others are still experimenting, we've rolled this out company-wide at Block, and with real impact.

11 Practical Ways I Use AI Agents Without Losing My Authenticity

· 9 min read
Rizel Scarlett
Staff Developer Advocate

mcp use cases

"Stop using AI," reads yet another viral post. I get it. It's frustrating to review a colleague's auto-generated work, filled with AI's classic giveaways like generic code comments and phrases like "In today's fast-paced world..."

Still, AI plays a pivotal role in my career. I don't rely on AI to do my work, but I use it to help me brainstorm and work more effciently. The introduction of Model Context Protocol (MCP) has made this even easier. MCP is an open standard that gives AI tools the context they need to be useful in the real world. It enables AI agents to interact with APIs, apps, and systems in a structured way. I use Codename goose, an open source AI agent built on MCP.

Here are 11 real ways I use AI Agents without sacrificing authenticity, creativity, or quality: