Corporate blog post from **Block** (`block.xyz/inside`), unsigned — the displayed author is **"Block"** —, published on **August 18, 2026**, ~930 words, announcing **the open-sourcing of Berd**, Block's internal desktop application for working with agents, and laying out the design thesis that guided it: giving agents character *"not only through roles, instructions, skills, and tools, but through distinctive visual identities"* — hence the in-house animated characters, the *"Gloopies"*. The post starts from an observation of fragmentation (*"The technology was powerful, but the experience around it was fragmented"*) and a precisely named interface problem: *"the product gives people little sense of how the agent is configured, which context and tools are available to it, and how it differs from another agent"*. Two structuring contributions. **(A) A three-tier articulation**: **goose** remains the framework and *runtime* that holds the agent loop; **Berd** is the desktop client (projects, context, sessions, agents, configuration); the two communicate via the **Agent Client Protocol**. **Buzz** is designated as the follow-up, for when solo work becomes collaborative (*"Start alone, then go multiplayer"*). **(B) Six requirements handed off to Buzz**, stated as a takeaway: *"private space, durable context, recognizable agent identities, reusable skills, visible configuration, and clearer visibility into an agent's configured context, tools, and capabilities"* — a grid directly reusable for evaluating an agent client. The text itself distinguishes identity from capability: *"The avatars make the agent recognizable. Its role, skills, and tools make it useful."* No usage figures are produced and no license is named for the open-sourcing.
#Berd#Block#open source
**Aucun auteur nommé** : le billet est signé **« Block »** — le champ *Author* de la page porte le nom de l'entreprise. Publié le **18 août 2026** sur `block.xyz/inside` · le blog **corporate** · et non sur `engineering.block.xyz`.
Trade-press brief (**Payments Dive**, *Dive Brief* format, **August 6, 2026**) covering **Block**'s quarterly earnings release: the company has already rolled out several AI tools to its customers — **Moneybot** (Cash App) and **Managerbot** (Square) — and has not yet decided how to charge for them. **Jack Dorsey** on the analyst call: *"We're in a fortunate position where we can experiment with a number of models, and then choose the right one that's going to align all of our incentives with our customers."* **The financial backdrop illuminates that stance.** Six months earlier, Block had laid off roughly **4,000 people, about 40% of its workforce**, in a reorganization explicitly framed around AI. In Q2 2026: gross profit **up 25% to $3.2B**, revenue **up 10% to $6.62B**, but **net income at $89M, down 83%** year over year due to severance costs closing out the restructuring; 2026 guidance was raised. AI's value, then, is being captured through the cost structure before it is captured through price. **The heaviest fact sits in the middle of the brief**, drawn from the shareholder letter: *"Starting in June, agentic AI helped write and review nearly all of our production code changes"* — writing **and** reviewing nearly all production code changes, at a publicly traded payments company, six months after cutting 40% of the workforce. A self-reported claim to investors, with no definition of *"nearly all"* or of what *"review"* covers. **The tooling**: **Goose**, an internal system built two years earlier, described as model-agnostic (it plugs in different commercial models for employees); **Buzz**, launched the previous month for *"agent collaboration, communication, and code repositories."* **On the customer side**: Moneybot monitors Cash App user activity and surfaces accounts, balances, and transactions — over **one million weekly active accounts**; Managerbot runs automated marketing, margin analysis, and suggests *"operational fixes"* to Square merchants. **Evercore ISI** analysts list four monetization paths — SaaS bundles, direct subscriptions, enterprise offerings, usage-based pricing — **none of them tied to outcomes**. Stated order of priority: **product quality → distribution → adoption → pricing model**. Two distribution facts round out the picture: Square is rolling into **Google Maps** with a *"conversational AI experience,"* described as *"the first step in a broader partnership between Square and Google"*; and the **Tags** payment device (keychain and NFC chip wands) shows **three million people on the waitlist**. Analyst quotes: William Blair (*"Block epitomizes the secular shift toward tech-forward digital finance firms"*) and Bank of America on the *"post-reset operating model."*
#Block#Jack Dorsey#Cash App
**Justin Bachman** — Senior Reporter · **Payments Dive** (groupe Industry Dive). Journaliste sectoriel paiements ; signe ici un **Dive Brief** · format court en deux temps (*Dive Brief* = les faits du jour, *Dive Insight* = le contexte) qui compile une conférence de résultats · une lettre aux actionnaires · un communiqué et trois notes d'analystes.
Block/Goose — MCP-UI and the Future of Agentic Interfaces: interactive web components in AI agent conversations via Model Context Protocol (block.github.io)