Question 1

What is quackd?

Accepted Answer

quackd is an open-source Python program that gives a small robot an LLM brain. You state a goal in plain language and the model picks one of the robot’s own skills at a time — look around, walk to something, kick it — until the goal is met or is clearly impossible. It works with Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Grok, or a local model through Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp or LM Studio.

Question 2

Do I need a robot to try quackd?

Accepted Answer

No. A 2D simulator ships with the package and runs on any laptop. Install uv and Python 3.11 or newer, then run: uvx quackd run find-and-kick --provider fake. That uses a scripted pilot, so it needs no API key, and it writes a GIF and a full transcript of every run.

Question 3

Which robots does quackd support?

Accepted Answer

Five adapters ship today: the Microduck from Pollen Robotics, the Open Duck Mini v2 you can 3D print and build yourself, the Reachy Mini head, an SO-101 class arm through LeRobot, and any wheeled base that accepts a Twist over rosbridge. Each robot declares a manifest, and the model is only ever offered the verbs that manifest declares.

Question 4

Has quackd run on a real robot?

Accepted Answer

Not yet, on any of the five adapters. What works today is the bundled simulator and offline mocks. The Open Duck Mini v2 is the closest to a first real run, because quackd ships that robot’s own daemon and the protocol is exercised against it over loopback in CI — so everything except the duck itself is tested.

Question 5

Can I control a robot from Claude?

Accepted Answer

Yes. quackd includes an MCP server, so Claude Code or Claude Desktop can drive one robot or a fleet interactively under the same safety rules as the command line. Add it with: claude mcp add quackd -- uvx quackd serve-mcp --robot microduck:sim2d.

Question 6

What is a .duck file?

Accepted Answer

A .duck file is a task written as a contract plus instructions, shaped like a SKILL.md. The YAML frontmatter is enforced by quackd — which verbs are allowed, which need a human to confirm, step and time budgets, success criteria and abort rules. The Markdown body is what the model reads. Ten of them ship with the package.

Question 7

How does quackd stop the model doing something dangerous?

Accepted Answer

A safety executor outside the prompt enforces the contract: an allowlist, parameter validation, confirmation gates, step and time budgets, abort rules, preconditions and a heartbeat with a kill switch. A verb that is not in the robot’s manifest does not exist, so the model cannot invent one, and stop always means stop rather than going limp.

Question 8

Is quackd free and open source?

Accepted Answer

Yes. quackd is licensed Apache-2.0 and published on PyPI. It has no paid tier and no token requirement, and it never needs $QUACKD to run.

Question 9

What is the $QUACKD token, and does it fund quackd?

Accepted Answer

It is a community token on Solana with no utility. It does not fund development, and it is not issued by or endorsed by the open-source quackd project. It grants no ownership, no revenue, no governance and no claim on the software. Tokens like this are extremely volatile and illiquid, so assume it can go to zero. Nothing on this page is financial advice.

Question 10

Where does the $QUACKD price on this page come from, and where can I trade it?

Accepted Answer

The token trades on PumpSwap and is listed on pump.fun and DexScreener; both are linked from the token section. The price here is fetched live from the public DexScreener API in your browser and refreshes about once a second. It is not stored or snapshotted, so if the feed is unavailable the page shows nothing rather than an old number. Prices move fast and can be wrong the moment you read them — always verify the contract address independently.