Some Airtable bases are just content. Yours has the pipeline in it, or the member list, or this quarter's pricing, which is why the cleanup it needs keeps not happening. Every bulk tool writes straight to a live base your views, automations, and interfaces react to instantly, and every AI tool wants your rows sent to somebody's cloud. Goose closes both doors at once. The open source agent from Block, now at the Linux Foundation, runs on your machine, and if you point it at a local model through Ollama, the model runs there too. The rows never leave your laptop while the work happens.
Scratch is what makes the work safe to keep. It pulls the base down as a folder of files, one per record, and Goose does 99% of the job there, against the copy. The last 1%, what writes back, is yours: every changed field comes to you as a diff, you approve row by row, and Scratch pushes only the approved records through the Airtable API. Your views and automations see nothing until then.
How it works
- Scratch pulls your base into files. A base or a single table becomes a folder on your laptop, one file per record, every field laid out to edit, with an
AGENTS.mddescribing the tables. - Goose edits the records. Open the folder in Goose Desktop or start a CLI session inside it. Goose reads the
AGENTS.mdon startup and knows your fields before your first prompt. Normalize every company name and fill the empty category cells from each record's notes. Goose works the files, never the live base. - You review every diff and publish. Scratch shows each changed field beside the original, word by word. Approve what holds up, and Scratch pushes only those records back through the Airtable API.
What people use it for
The cleanup that never happens because doing it by hand means opening every row:
- Normalize inconsistent company and contact names across the table.
- Fill empty category, status, or tag cells by reading each record's own notes.
- Cut every long summary down to a single line.
- Turn freehand text into the exact single-select your views expect.
- Backfill the linked-record references someone left blank.
And because the model can be local, the base you would never paste into a chat window is suddenly fair game.
Why not an MCP server?
Goose speaks MCP natively, and wiring an Airtable extension into it takes a minute. But an extension writes to the live base from inside the agent loop, so one autonomous pass rewrites every record while your views, automations, and interfaces react in real time. You find out what the agent did by watching your base change.
Scratch gives Goose the same full read and write against a local copy instead. The write-back is lifted out of the loop and handed to you as a per-row decision. Goose can change anything. Only you can commit it. On a base your team runs on, that gap is the whole point.
What Goose edits in Airtable
- Long-text and rich-text fields
- Single-line text, including titles
- Single-select and multi-select tags
- Date, currency, and number fields
- Attachment captions and linked-record references
Formulas, rollups, lookups, autonumber fields, and the created and last-modified timestamps are never editable; Scratch refuses them at write-back. Automations and interfaces are never exposed. Validators read your option sets and flag any value that is not in them, right next to the diff, so an invented select surfaces before you approve it. The full list lives on Scratch for Airtable.
Questions people ask
Is this an Airtable MCP extension for Goose?
No. An extension hands Goose the write button to your live base. With Scratch, Goose's built-in file tools do the editing on a local copy, and writing back is a separate step you approve, one record at a time.
Does my data have to go to a cloud model?
Only if you choose one. Goose runs no model of its own: bring a cloud key or subscription, or run a local model through Ollama. With a local model, the files and the model both sit on your laptop, and no AI provider sees a single row.
Will it break my formulas, views, or automations?
No. Formulas, rollups, lookups, and autonumber fields are never editable, and Scratch refuses them at write-back. Automations are never exposed. Validators flag a select value that is not in your option set, right next to the diff.
Can I roll a change back after it writes?
Yes. Scratch keeps the original next to the rewrite, so every written record reverts per row. You decide which version stays.
Can it handle a 5,000-row table?
Yes, that is the use case. Run a dozen records to settle the prompt, then point Goose at the rest of the table.
Do I need to be technical?
No. Goose Desktop is a normal app on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Open the Scratch folder, describe the cleanup, review the diffs. The CLI is there if you prefer a terminal.
See it on your own base
The fastest way to trust it is to watch it run on your data. Book a 30-minute demo on your Airtable base →, or try Scratch free and take the first pass yourself.