IBM Bob

Totally reminds me of "HP Offers 'That Cloud Thing Everyone Is Talking About'"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8

You should never name a tech product Bob in the UK, because the moment it isn't perfect, it'll just get called "Bobbins" [0], especially where I'm from.

I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money. They've just slunk off into a corner hugging their old architectures they have a moat around, and thrown out some audacious nonsense like Watson now and again, but nothing has stuck. When is somebody in that organisation going to try and innovate properly again?

I'm not sure this is the answer I'd be rooting for.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bobbins

The last product I know of named Bob didn’t fare so well.

Interesting they are renting out agent skills. You can pick up "Java Modernization" at $20 a month for "Specialist workflows to help with modernizing Java applications", or "IBM i" for "Specialist modes, workflows, and skills to work with IBM i applications".

The "What developers say" carousel has a single Java dev and dev advocate. They got lots of quotes from managers, directors, CEOs, and an "AI strategist".

This sounds a lot like Spotify's XIRP. They managed to vibe something useful for their own engineers, were super hyped, and decided to release it in public. However what are the odds this harness will stand the test of time against actual harness makers like OpenAI or Anthropic? Neither Spotify or IBM are focused on making models or harnesses, these are just side-products.

Nobody got fired for using IBM Bob

The landing/marketing page for this looks like something someone promoted/vibe coded including the Bob mascot.

Looks awful from a design perspective. Had to double check that this was the actual IBM domain

Working with any AI tool means you trust the vendor, sometimes you don't have a choice because the best models/tools are from specific providers. IBM isn't a company I would ever trust.

Is Bib Bob's partner?

https://imgur.com/a/3PQXIsQ

This can only mean that IBM Clippy is next.

This is especially funny when you realize how much money IBM dumped into Watson over all these years.

So much for the "THINK" motto.

I was at an IBM Bob party, behind the scenes it's basically other frontier models with an IBM-specific context.

Is this just a harness or using a proprietary model in the background? Anthropic and OpenAI are already very well trained in IBM system i and z knowledge. Unless Bob is somehow improving the integration to these midrange and mainframe systems I literally dont see any benefit to using Bob. IBM will just kill this proprietary tech in 5 years as they are currently doing with RDi or forget about updating it like SEU.

I'm really confused what this is, is it a harness or a new model by IBM? Some reviews on that page suggests that it's a new model

Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Meta, all the giants are always coming late to the party.

I like how the solitary review is word salad.

Companies trying to make AI less of a commodity that you can just swap out for another ...

No thanks, that's what I like about AI so I'll just stay with the raw tokens.

31 years after Microsoft Bob, IBM releases it's own IBM Bob. :)

I thought the image was a joke, but you really pay with Bobcoins.. lmao

https://bob.ibm.com/pricing

The next step is yandex/nebius "vasya"

“Bobcoins are the consumption-based billing metric used for Bob subscriptions. They provide a transparent, predictable way to measure and bill for your Bob usage.”

I’m getting sick of these mobile game currency style credits/coins that obfuscate costs or usage. It’s honestly pretty gross.

Just telling us exactly what we get for our money.

This somehow has less personality than plain enterprise software. How IBM.

Bobcoins. Hehe.

Looks like LEGO's lawyers will knock on their door soon.

Should have called it Bob The Builder

The logo, the name... Horrible marketing/branding.

I used Bob extensively at an IBM acquisition, it was absolutely dreadful. Bobcoins.

Thought this was going to be about Microsoft Bob.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

The review that "IBM Bob isn't just another autocomplete tool" tells you everything you need to know about this product. lol.

At least it's not Clippy?

I’m quite certain it’s a fork of Roo Code which is a fork of Cline.

When I saw earlier reviews and videos of it, I couldn’t shake the ick of IBM shamelessly forking a startup’s code. There was even some UI slop where they had some big green pulsing button.

That combined with knowing full well how inefficient the default Roo Code base prompts were, I would not be surprised if there’s some massive token churn.

Announcement post from April: https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-04-28-introducing-ibm-bob-ai-d...

Too late ?

Lol github copilot 5 years late

This is embarrassing. It would have been better to release nothing than this.

Should have been IBM Tom, after legendary IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson. But perhaps they didn't want to sully his name.

Not to shit on their effort or anything, but it looks like a VS Code fork + an agent panel which is very ... late 2024 energy?

Bobalytics

ibm desperately clinging to relevancy by hopping on the LLM bandwagon.

Not to be confused with Microsoft Bob:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

Lost opportunity to call it Hal

I bet this will be as successful as Microsoft Bob.

Oh, so we are yet again in the 'Bob' phase?

Maybe this time it'll work.

ibm bob, will help you make slop

The companies who are hoarding RAM to produce pointless products should be called out. Deprive working class from computing resources to sell some corporate crap. Get fucked.