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Quick Tips

Tips for working with Goose:

Here is our collection of tips we have for getting started & working efficiently with Goose!

  • Goose can and will edit files. Use a git strategy to avoid losing anything - such as staging your
    personal edits and leaving Goose edits unstaged until reviewed. Or consider using individual commits which can be reverted.
  • Goose can and will run commands. You can ask it to check with you first if you are concerned. It will check commands for safety as well.
  • You can interrupt Goose with CTRL+C. Use this command to correct Goose or give it more info.
  • Goose works best when solving concrete problems. Experiment with how far you need to break that problem down to get Goose to solve it. Be specific! E.g. it will likely fail to "create a banking app", but probably does a good job if prompted with "create a Fastapi app with an endpoint for deposit and withdrawal and with account balances stored in mysql keyed by id"
  • Goose can troubleshoot. If something goes wrong, Goose can help troubleshoot issues by examining logs, analyzing error messages, and suggesting possible resolutions.
  • Leverage Goose to learn. Use Goose to learn new technologies or frameworks by asking it to explain things like code snippets, concepts, or for best practices relevant to your project.
  • Goose needs context. If Goose doesn't have enough context to start with, it might go down the wrong direction. Tell it to read files that you are referring to or search for objects in code. Even better, ask it to summarize them for you, which will help it set up its own next steps. You can create a Goosehints files to do this.
  • Use easy search terms. Refer to any objects in files with something that is easy for Goose to search for, such as `"the MyExample class"
  • Teach Goose how you test. Goose loves to know how to run tests to get a feedback loop going, just like you do. If you tell it how you test things locally and quickly, it can make use of that when working on your project
  • Goose can do scripting tasks. You can use Goose for tasks that would require scripting at times, even looking at your screen and correcting designs/helping you fix bugs, try asking it to help you in a way you would ask a person.
  • Goose will make mistakes. Sometimes Goose will go in the wrong direction. Feel free to correct it, or start over again.
  • Goose can run tasks continuously if asked. You can tell Goose to run things for you continuously (and it will iterate, try, retry) but you can also tell it to check with you before doing things (and then later on tell it to go off on its own and do its best to solve).
  • Goose can run anywhere. Doesn't have to be in a repo, just ask Goose!
  • Keep Goose updated. Regularly update Goose to benefit from our latest features, bug fixes, and performance improvements.