Google open-sources Elephant-Goldfish, the plugin thousands of its engineers use to rein in sloppy AI code
JafarNajafov · x · 2026-11-06
Google open-sourced the Elephant-Goldfish Model (EGM), an Apache-2.0 plugin that thousands of its engineers use daily to stop AI from shipping sloppy code, under a "design first, code later" workflow:
- The Elephant: a long-running, deep-context agent that writes zero code. It interviews and argues with you, then drafts a Markdown spec covering the problem, plan, alternatives, and exact files to change.
- The Goldfish: fresh zero-context subagents that review the spec and referenced source without seeing the design conversation, exposing unstated assumptions and blind spots the discussion would have inherited.
- Fixed pipeline: egm-brainstorm (strict no-code debate) → egm-draft (spec document) → egm-review (stress test) → human approval before implementation.
Google recommends EGM for features needing design decisions; small clear bug fixes stay in your normal workflow. It installs with one command into Antigravity CLI/App/IDEs, Claude Code, and Codex.
More from coding & agent
- Meta's Kats: an all-in-one Python toolkit for time series analysis — mdancho84 · 2026-11-06
- Dev claims adaptive testing cuts CI bill to 2-3% of $1M peak — vincent_koc · 2026-11-06
- Zed editor nears 93k GitHub stars, adding ~300 a day — zed-industries · 2026-11-06
- Meta gave Conductor users 16 days before shutdown; OpenAI kept the interface and folded it into Codex — YvesMulkers · 2026-11-06
- Investor's AI agents autonomously ran 12 expert interviews in 2.5 days — nathanbenaich · 2026-11-06
- Blogger ranks 11 AI tools: Claude Code top, Meta AI and Siri bottom — rubenhassid · 2026-11-06