Remain Ai Chat
A free ChatGPT-based coding assistant plugin from Dutch vendor Remain Software for Eclipse-based IBM i development tools, Rational Developer for i (RDi) and Remain's own MiWorkplace, launched in May 2023 as one of the earliest AI coding aids for RPG and COBOL on IBM i.
Remain Ai Chat is a free plugin from Dutch vendor Remain Software that adds a ChatGPT-backed chat panel to Eclipse-based IBM i development tools, including Rational Developer for i (RDi) and Remain's own MiWorkplace. Remain announced it in May 2023 at the COMMON POWERUp conference in Denver, well before most later IBM i AI coding tools appeared. It calls the OpenAI ChatGPT API directly, so each user supplies their own API token and organization key and pays OpenAI per token; Remain CTO Wim Jongman said the company's own test usage cost about $0.35. Inside the IDE it gives contextual code suggestions, bug checking, and documentation proposals for free-format RPG and COBOL source. Unlike agentic platforms such as IBM Bob or CoderFlow, it is a lightweight Eclipse Marketplace add-on rather than a full autonomous coding agent, and Remain distributes it as freeware on GitHub without publishing it as open source.
Related Terms
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.
Free-Format RPG
A modern RPG coding style that drops the rigid column-based syntax of traditional fixed-format RPG in favor of freer, more readable statement syntax.
COBOL
A long-established business programming language still running production logic on IBM i and other legacy enterprise platforms alongside RPG.
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.
CoderFlow
An agentic AI development platform from Profound Logic, reported by IT Jungle on January 19, 2026, that runs multiple competing AI agents to write, compile, test, and fix RPG, COBOL, and CL code on IBM i rather than just suggesting code.