I tried a Claude Code alternative that's local, open source, and completely free - how it works

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Free AI tools Goose and Qwen3-coder may replace a pricey Claude Code plan.
• Setup is straightforward but requires a powerful local machine.
• Early tests show promise, though issues remain with accuracy and retries.

Jack Dorsey is the founder of Twitter (now X), Square (now Block), and Bluesky (still blue). Back in July, he posted a fairly cryptic statement on X, saying "goose + qwen3-coder = wow".

Also: I've tested free vs. paid AI coding tools - here's which one I'd actually use

Since then, interest has grown in both Goose and Qwen3-coder. Goose, developed by Dorsey's company Block, is an open-source agent framework, similar to Claude Code. Qwen3-coder is a coding-centric large language model similar to Sonnet-4.5. Both are free.

Together, suggests the internet, they can combine to create a ...