Block releases Berd, a desktop app it built to give its employees a single environment for working with AI agents across different models, under Apache 2.0
Block, the technology company founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that owns Square, Cash App and the music streaming service Tidal …
VentureBeatCarl Franzen
Context & Ripple Effects
Berd extends Block’s recent push to build shared environments for people and agents: in July, the company introduced Buzz, an open-source collaboration workspace for messages, code repositories and workflows. The new desktop app narrows that effort to employees’ day-to-day use of agents across multiple models.
The release also follows Block’s reported layoffs and internal productivity push around AI, including Dorsey’s goal for Block to feel like a “mini AGI”. Publishing the tool under Apache 2.0 makes the internal work surface available beyond Block rather than keeping it solely as an in-house productivity system.
First-order effects
Block employees gain a single desktop environment for using AI agents across different models, reducing the need to work separately in each model’s interface.
Apache 2.0 licensing lets outside developers inspect, modify and deploy Berd, giving Block’s internal agent-workflow tooling an external user and contributor base.
Second-order effects
Model providers integrated into a shared work surface compete more directly on agent performance and workflow fit, because Berd can present multiple models in one employee environment.
Buzz and Berd together give Block a broader open-source stack for collaboration and agent work, making its developer-facing AI tooling more coherent across team and individual workflows.
Third-order effects
If multi-model agent desktops gain adoption, the durable point of control shifts toward the work surface that coordinates agents and workflows rather than any single model’s standalone interface.
Open-source agent work surfaces may make integration and workflow design a more important source of differentiation for companies deploying AI internally.
The trend:Enterprise AI is moving from isolated model chat tools toward shared, multi-model work surfaces that organize agents around everyday workflows.
sharing berd, a new open source desktop app to build with 🪿 we built this with a v small team, design + engineering working really close together, and designers building berd using berd! v proud of the fun and useful this is, and excited to keep building it out💫
Meet Berd We just dropped the best way to run your favorite models + agents in one interface. Open source. Super clean UI. Gloopies. Like Codex, but more vibey. Give it a try. I love it. https://berd.xyz/
This is just a pure Cambrian explosion So many agent products that we can hardly keep + new releases like this one nearly every day What happens after a Cambrian explosion? Lots of consolidation and many players disappear - so who wins?
AI agents can feel abstract. Berd gives them roles, skills, tools, and distinctive visual identities. Berd is now open source. Download it, try it with your own agents and workflows, and share what you make: https://berd.xyz/
i've been working on goose for years, and berd is when the interface really clicked if you try it, tell us what you like about it! next up is bringing what we learned here into buzz
Providing an interface that every employee can configure to be their own has empowered everyone to do more with AI at Block We're experimenting a lot with Berd and there's a lot of good stuff we'll bring to Buzz Try it out! https://berd.xyz/ https://x.com/...
Today we open sourced our no 1 used internal tool, berd. An agent where you can byo harness/models while keeping your work and context in one place, in an unhinged environment where you can build your dream team of agents. Try it out at https://berd.xyz/!
Today we're open sourcing Berd, a beautiful desktop app for working with AI agents. And one that isn't afraid to have a personality. We had capable models and harnesses everywhere, but no environment around them that we actually loved opening every day. So a small team built one
We often build the tools we need ourselves. Berd is the desktop application our teams use to work with AI agents across projects, skills, tools, and models. Today, we're making it open source and sharing what we've learned. Meet Berd, AI with character: https://block.xyz/...
Berd is a great harness that I used internally for a couple months as a Codex alternative. I really appreciate the first class representation of agents and this paradigm is serving me well as I explore Buzz more, but I still use Berd for certain flows. Congrats team!
Block just open sourced Berd, the desktop app its teams use internally to work with AI agents across projects, skills, tools, and models. “We had access to increasingly capable agents through tools such as Goose, Claude Code, and Codex, but working with them meant navigating