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

ZDNET walks through installing and configuring a free, local AI coding stack—Goose as the agent framework, Ollama as the model host, and Qwen3-coder:30b as the coding LLM—covering setup steps (model download, network exposure, context settings, and provider configuration in Goose), a quick WordPress plugin test that only succeeded after multiple iterations, and early impressions that performance is solid on powerful hardware, with further evaluation planned to see if it can replace paid tools like Claude Code.