Bob Premium Package for i
The IBM i-specific add-on to IBM Bob, generally available June 24, 2026. It gives Bob about 40 skills and workflows and about 30 tools that work directly against QSYS, the IFS, CL, SQL and Db2 for i on a live system.
The Bob Premium Package for i is the layer that makes IBM Bob an IBM i product rather than a general coding agent that happens to know some RPG. It reached general availability on June 24, 2026, the same day as Bob 2.0. It adds roughly 40 curated skills and agentic workflows for common IBM i tasks, including explaining a program, converting fixed-format RPG to free-format, refactoring a monolith, generating RPG, CL, COBOL or DDS, writing documentation and producing unit tests. Underneath those sit about 30 IBM i tools that read and write source members in QSYS and files in the IFS, run CL commands and SQL statements, launch a 5250 session and manage the library list, plus a retrieval-augmented generation workflow. It also adds two operating modes: a Developer Mode carrying IBM i language expertise across RPG, COBOL, DDS, SQL and CL, and a Db2 for i Database Mode for SQL optimization with error checking, which is the first time IBM has put an AI assistant directly on Db2 for i query work. Reported pricing at general availability was a $20 to $40 monthly add-on on top of a base Bob subscription.
Related Terms
IBM Bob (Project Bob)
IBM's generally available AI coding agent for IBM i, built as a fork of Visual Studio Code and tuned for RPG, CL, DDS, and SQL. Reached GA on March 24, 2026; Bob 2.0 and the IBM i-specific Bob Premium Package for i shipped June 24, 2026.
Build with Bob
An option added to watsonx Orchestrate's Create an agent dialog in the August 2026 release, listed by IBM as a preview, that launches IBM Bob into a workspace wired to your Orchestrate tenant to generate agents, tools and workflows from natural language.
Db2 for i
The relational database management system built into every IBM i operating system, tightly integrated with IBM i rather than a separately installed database product.
RPG
Report Program Generator, the primary business application programming language on IBM i and its AS/400 predecessors, still running the majority of production logic in most IBM i shops.
IBM i
IBM's operating system for Power servers running traditional AS/400-lineage business applications, with Db2 for i built directly into the OS.