Block Open-Sources Berd, a Desktop App for Managing AI Agent Context

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Block, the financial technology company, released Berd as an open-source desktop application on August 18, 2025, built on Tauri 2 and React 19. The tool emerged from internal frustration with fragmented AI agent environments, where teams juggled separate tools like Goose, Claude Code, and Codex with inconsistent context handling. Berd centralises conversations, files, instructions, agents, skills, and models into persistent projects, connecting to a Goose backend via the Agent Client Protocol. A core design principle behind Berd is that users should always be able to see which model, agent, and context are active at any given moment. The release highlights a broader challenge in AI-assisted development: when context variables are hidden, results become difficult to reproduce or debug.

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