Big Blue Unveils Bob Premium Pack For IBM i

June 1, 2026 Alex Woodie

Early Bob users who were frustrated with the inability to work with source code residing on IBM i will be happy to hear that the functionality will soon be available in the Bob Premium Package, which IBM announced in May and will start shipping in June. The Premium Pack also includes some other new capabilities that will be useful for IBM i developers, including new modes, skills, and tools.

The first version of IBM’s Bob, the AI tool that help developers understand, document, and generate code in RPG and other IBM i languages, generally has been well-received by the IBM i community. There was significant interest in Big Blue’s coding co-pilot at COMMON’s recent POWERUp conference in New Orleans, where there were at least six sessions specifically on Bob, not to mention dozens more on AI topics in general. As AI coding tools proliferate in the wider IT world, the IBM i community seems genuinely grateful to have an IBM i-specific AI tool to call their own.

For all the positive Bob news, the lack of one pesky feature was a dealbreaker for some would-be Bob users: The requirement for source code to be resident on a PC or in a Git repo for Bob to work its AI magic. That meant it was no-go for IBM i developers who develop in the traditional manner, where source members reside directly on the QSYS file system on IBM i.

“I tried the pre-release version of Bob for a while but since it didn’t utilize IBM i connections, including the ability to work with source files and libraries, I stopped using it,” an IBM i professional told IT Jungle in April. “I was looking forward to the official release of Bob, hoping these limitations were taken care of. They were not.”

The Bob Premium Package will introduce new IBM i-specific skills. (Image courtesy Tim Rowe/IBM)

The good news is that this feature will soon be available in the IBM Bob Premium Package for i, which the company announced on May 21 and will deliver on June 24.

According to a POWERUp 2026 keynote on Bob by Tim Rowe, who now has the IBM title of senior technical staff member (STSM) for application development and systems management, Bob will utilize the same native IBM i connection that IBM uses with Code for i, the VS Code plug-in that allows the popular Web-based IDE to connect to IBM i.

But that’s not all. In addition to native support for source code residing in QSYS, the Bob Premium Package will bring several other capabilities, including a new IBM i Developer Mode. According to Rowe, the IBM i Developer Mode essentially will turn Bob into a hardcore IBM i developer.

“A mode is basically like a persona. It helps Bob understand ‘This is the activity that we’re going to be doing,’” Rowe said during his COMMON keynote. “And so what we have done with this mode is to help frame that, ‘I’m going to now develop. I’m not going to necessarily develop for Python. I’m not going to necessarily develop for Java or Node.js. I want to really focus in on the IBM i-native languages, RPG, COBOL, DDS, SQL, and CL.’ The goal being some of the intricacies, the uniqueness of our platform, are taken into account when you’re trying to modify that type of code.”

The Premium Package will also introduce around 40 new skills and workflows that enable Bob to perform specific tasks on IBM i. For instance, one of the skills will focus on replacing record-level database access with SQL, according to Rowe. Writing unit test cases is another task that Bob will be able to handle. Extracting business rules, compiling code, generating display files, and converting RPG from fixed-format to free-format are additional skills that the premium version of Bob will have that the base version of Bob will not.

Bob will learn how to use these tools with the Premium Package. (Image courtesy Tim Rowe/IBM)

“Skills are a way to give Bob that context, that clarity on, ‘I want to perform a task. How do you do it? What’s the best way? What are the gotchas that Bob needs to be aware of?’” Rowe said. “Those are the things that we are building into these different use cases.”

According to Rowe’s presentation, Bob Premium will bring about 30 specialized tools, such as reading and writing to QSYS or IFS, running CL commands and SQL statements, launching 5250 sessions, and managing library lists.

The Premium Package will also introduce support for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) functionality in Bob. RAG is a way to augment a large language model (LLM) with specific information from the business. In this case, IBM is augmenting Bob with IBM i-specific information, such as what the cycle is from System/36-era RPG, or how to call SQL services on IBM i.

“We’ve been able to take all the information that’s out on a website like the RPG Café, to take our compiler leads’ brain, Barbara Morris, and trying to get that information and put it in and give it to Bob,” Rowe said. “We’ve been able to do some of the same stuff with SQL, providing some of the SQL details to the SQL services information that maybe is too new for the language model, so that we can feed that in to Bob, so that Bob now has a much broader pool of information to be able to perform the task that you created to make it work better.”

IBM is adding RAG capabilities to Bob’s Premium Package. (Image courtesy Tim Rowe/IBM)

IBM is selling the Premium Package for Bob in three ways. Customers can get individual monthly subscriptions, enterprise-wide monthly subscriptions, or a monthly subscription for “Enterprise Authorized User Advanced Support” (but it’s not immediately clear what “advanced support” means).

IBM is providing a trial version of Bob, which is free for 30 days. The base version of Bob is called Bob Pro, which comes with 40 bobcoins, which are also called resource units (RUs). Bob Pro costs $20 per user per month, plus a $3 per month support fee, and users can buy another 40 bobcoins for $20 per month. Bob Pro Plus comes with 160 bobcoins and costs $60 per month (plus also a $9 per month fee for support). Users can buy another with 160 bobcoins for another $60. Bob Ultra comes with 500 bobcoins and costs $200 per month, plus a $30 per month support fee. Bob Ultra can buy another 500 bobcoins for $200.

Bob Enterprise includes the base Bob functionality and adds several features, including detailed usage reporting, individual and team quota management, and single sign-on (SSO) integration. Customers must buy subscriptions for Bob clients, which are $20 per use per month. They also must buy bobcoins, which can be pooled among Bob users. One RU for Bob Enterprise is about $500 per month. There’s also a $75 per year fee for Bob Enterprise pooled consumption RU support.

IBM is also working on an expansion to the Premium Package for i, which it calls Premium Package Expansion. According to IBM presentations, Premium Package Expansion will introduce new features like “end to end” (the meaning of which is unclear to us) along with software development life cycle (SDLC) orchestration. For more information, check out IBM’s Bob site at bob.ibm.com/.

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