Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
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ZDNET's key takeaways
Goose acts as the agent that plans, iterates, and applies changes.
Ollama is the local runtime that hosts the model.
Qwen3-coder is the coding-focused LLM that generates results.
If you've been programming for any number of years, you've pretty much lived through a bunch of hype cycles. Whether it's a new development environment, a new language, a new plugin, or some new online service with an oh-so-powerful time-saving API, it's all "revolutionary" and "world-changing," at least according to the PR reps hawking The Big New Thing.
And then there's agentic AI coding. When a tool can help you do four years of product development in four days, the impact is world-changing. While vibe coding has its detractors (for good reason), AI coding agents like OpenAI's Codex and Claude Code really are revolutionary. They are radically transforming the software industry.
Also: I tried a Claude Code alternative that's local, open source, and completely free - how it works
In my testing, I determined you can get a few hours of agentic coding done here and there with the $20/month plans from the AI companies. But if you're going to put in full days of coding, you'll need to upgrade to $100 or $200/month plans. Otherwise, you'll risk getting put on hold until your token allocation resets.
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