watsonx Code Assistant for i
IBM's November 2025 preview announcement of an AI code assistant purpose-built for RPG on IBM i. The preview track was superseded by IBM Bob, which reached general availability in March 2026.
watsonx Code Assistant for i was announced by IBM on November 19, 2025 as an upcoming, IBM i-specific member of IBM's watsonx Code Assistant family, positioned to help developers convert fixed-format RPG to free-format RPG and explain existing code. It did not reach independent general availability; the underlying RPG-focused AI coding assistant track out of IBM's Rochester lab was superseded by IBM Bob, which reached GA 1.0.0 on March 24, 2026. Treat this term as historical context, not a currently available product.
Related Terms
watsonx
IBM's platform for AI and data, spanning watsonx.ai (foundation models and generative AI), watsonx.data (data store), and watsonx.governance (AI governance), with watsonx Assistant and watsonx Orchestrate built on top.
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.
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.
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.
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.