Extension Manager

You don't always need to manually manage extensions. The Extension Manager extension enables goose to dynamically discover, enable, and disable extensions during active sessions. Based on the task you give it, goose recognizes when it needs a specific extension, enables it when required, and suggests disabling unused extensions if the bloat is eating up your context window.

Simply describe your task, and goose will handle the extension management automatically.

Configuration

info

The Extension Manager extension is a built-in goose platform extension and is already enabled by default when goose is installed.

goose Desktop

1. Click the button in the top-left to open the sidebar
2. Click Extensions in the sidebar
3. Toggle Extension Manager on

goose CLI

1. Run the configure command:

goose configure

2. Choose to Toggle Extensions

┌   goose-configure 
│
◇  What would you like to configure?
│  Toggle Extensions 
│
◆  Enable extensions: (use "space" to toggle and "enter" to submit)
│  ● extensionmanager
└  Extension settings updated successfully

Why Use Extension Manager?

goose can work with many extensions, but having too many enabled at once can:

• Overwhelm the LLM with too many tool choices
• Reduce the quality of tool selection
• Slow down response times
• Exceed recommended limits (5 extensions or 50 tools)

The Extension Manager solves this by letting goose:

• Discover what extensions are available
• Enable extensions only when needed for specific tasks
• Disable extensions when they're no longer required

This creates a more focused, efficient experience where goose has access to exactly the tools it needs, when it needs them.

Recommended Limits

For optimal performance, aim for 5 or fewer active extensions with a total of 50 or fewer tools. The Extension Manager helps you stay within these limits by enabling task-specific extensions only when needed.

Available Tools

The Extension Manager provides these tools:

Tool	Description	Use Case
search_available_extensions	Discover extensions that can be enabled or disabled	Finding the right extension for a task
manage_extensions	Enable or disable an extension by name	Loading/unloading extensions dynamically
list_resources	List resources from extensions (if supported)	Discovering available data sources
read_resource	Read specific resource content (if supported)	Accessing extension-provided data

tip

The resource tools (list_resources and read_resource) are only available when at least one enabled extension supports resources.

Example Usage

Let's enable an extension when we need it. In this example, we'll enable the GitHub extension to work with repositories.

goose Prompt

List all my GitHub repositories

goose Output

Desktop

I'll enable the GitHub extension for you so we can work with repositories.

MANAGE_EXTENSIONS
action: enable
extension_name: github

✅ The extension 'github' has been installed successfully

The GitHub extension is now active.

I'll list your GitHub repositories using the GitHub extension.

LIST_REPOSITORIES

Here are your repositories:

...

Would you like to work with any of these repositories?