The right level of automation for an AI agent is 99%. The right level of access is read and write everything. The remaining 1% is review and publish. That last 1% stays human.
Goose is the open source AI agent that started at Block and now lives at the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation. It runs on your machine, as a desktop app on macOS, Windows, and Linux or as a CLI, and it brings whatever model you choose. Every line of it is Apache-licensed and readable. If your objection to AI on your catalog is that you can't see inside the thing doing the editing, Goose is the agent where you can.
You connect Scratch to wherever your content lives. Shopify, WordPress, Notion, HubSpot, the others. It downloads everything as a folder of files on your laptop. You point Goose at that folder, in the desktop app or from a terminal, and tell it what you want done. Rewrite the meta descriptions on these 400 posts so each one is under 158 characters and ends with a call to action. Goose does it.
Then Scratch shows you every change as a per-record diff, the way you'd review a pull request. You do the 1%: approve what ships. Scratch publishes only those records back to your CMS, one at a time. Goose edits. You keep the merge button.
Any model, including one that never leaves your laptop
Goose runs no model of its own. You configure a provider and bring your own key or subscription: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter, Azure, Bedrock, more than fifteen at last count. If you already pay for Claude or ChatGPT, Goose can run on the subscription you have.
Or you skip the cloud entirely. Point Goose at a local model through Ollama and the agent side of the loop runs wholly on your machine. The files are local, the model is local, and no AI provider sees your catalog at all. The only network traffic is Scratch pulling from and publishing to your CMS, which was already the deal.
It reads the briefing Scratch already wrote
Scratch writes an AGENTS.md into every workspace: the folder layout, the schema for each table, which fields are off-limits. Goose loads AGENTS.md from the working directory when a session starts, the same file Codex reads. Open the folder and Goose is oriented before you type a word. If you keep Goose-specific rules, they go in a .goosehints file next to it, and Goose reads that too.
Two gates, and one of them never moves
Goose ships with its own permission modes. Chat mode blocks tools entirely. Approve mode asks before every write. Smart approve asks only when a call looks risky. Autonomous mode just goes. Pick whichever matches your nerves; that dial governs what Goose does to the files.
The Scratch gate sits after all of that, and it doesn't move. Whatever mode Goose runs in, it only ever reaches the copy of your content in the folder. Publishing is not a tool Goose has.
The things you're probably worried about
Will Goose publish anything to my live site? No. Goose only reads and writes files in your Scratch folder. Scratch is the only thing that talks to your CMS, and it only publishes what you've clicked approve on, one record at a time. That holds in autonomous mode too. The gate is not a Goose setting you could get wrong.
Can I undo if something ships I didn't want? Yes. Every published record is reversible from the Scratch app, per row. The original sits next to the rewritten one until you tell Scratch which one stays.
What about my prices, SKUs, member data, anything sensitive? Nothing writes back until you approve it, and Scratch writes back only the fields that actually changed, so a stray edit to a sensitive field surfaces as a diff you reject. Fields the platform marks read-only are flagged in review the moment an edit touches them, whole tables can be marked read-only when you connect, and Python validators will flag any diff that touches a field you've told them to watch, right next to the diff.
Does anyone see my content because it came through Scratch? Only the model provider you configured in Goose, under your account's terms, same as if you'd pasted the text in by hand. Scratch adds no AI and holds no model credentials. Run a local model and no provider sees it at all.
How is this different from wiring a CMS extension into Goose? Goose speaks MCP, and there are extensions for plenty of platforms. Every one of them hands Goose the publish button. Scratch doesn't. Goose gets full read and write on the files, and the publish step stays in your hands. That's the whole difference.
Can I do this on hundreds of records at once? Yes, that's the use case. Goose works through the folder file by file, and the diff grid handles the review at catalog scale.
Do I need to be a developer? No. The desktop app is a normal app: open the Scratch folder, type what you want done. If you live in the terminal, the CLI is the same agent.
Browse the skills below for prompts that work end-to-end with Goose.