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IBM Bob - Ship & Scale (Part 4)

By Narendra Murthy posted 15 days ago

  

Ship & Scale

Orchestrator · Bob Shell · DevOps · Resources

Advanced orchestration, terminal automation, DevOps manifests, and your complete reference library

 Lab 7-8 +  All Labs  •  Resources

Fortnight 4 Overview

Use Orchestrator mode to manage multi-domain projects, run Bob Shell from your terminal for scripting and DevOps automation, generate Tekton and Ansible manifests using AGENTS.md, and have a complete resource library for ongoing reference.

•    Week 7: Orchestrator mode — multi-step project coordination across specialties

•    Week 8: Bob Shell terminal automation, DevOps with AGENTS.md, large codebase strategy

Time commitment: 3–4 hours per week

Prerequisites: Fortnights 1–3 complete. This fortnight brings everything together.

FN 1 ✓

Get Started

FN 2 ✓

Build & Review

FN 3 ✓

Modernize

FN 4 ← NOW

Ship & Scale

Fortnight 4 — Learning Plan

WEEK 7   |   Orchestrator Mode: Multi-Step Project Coordination

Orchestrator Mode: Multi-Step Project Coordination

Objective: Use Orchestrator mode to coordinate complex tasks that span multiple modes, and understand how it manages context and delegation.

📖 Required Reading

•    Orchestrator mode — how it delegates, which sub-modes it uses, limitations

•    Context poisoning — critical reading before using Orchestrator on large tasks

•    Working with large projects — telemetry-driven prioritisation

•    IBM + Anthropic partnership

🎬 Videos

•    Your Agentic AI Coding Partner  (youtube.com/@ibm-bob)

•    From Observability to Action

🔬 Lab This Week

•    Lab 8 Part A: Orchestrator Mode — 5-part feature build coordinated across Plan, Code, Ask modes

Orchestrator Pro Tips

•    Give Orchestrator a numbered list of requirements — it manages each as a sub-task with the right mode

•    You can override a decision mid-task: "Change requirement 3 to X instead." Orchestrator will adapt the plan

•    Orchestrator has no tool access of its own — it only delegates to Code, Ask, Plan and Advanced

•    Max 37 tools per agent for 78% accuracy. Use Advanced mode's MCP sparingly and purposefully

•    If Orchestrator's output degrades, start a new chat — context poisoning accumulates across delegations

✅ Week 7 Checklist

□    Orchestrator mode used for a 5-part requirement set

□    Observed automatic delegation to at least 3 different sub-modes

□    Successfully overrode a requirement mid-task and watched Orchestrator adapt

□    Ran /review on the Orchestrator-built feature to validate quality

WEEK 8   |   Bob Shell, DevOps & Large Codebase Strategy

Bob Shell, DevOps & Large Codebase Strategy

Objective: Automate git and DevOps workflows with Bob Shell, generate IaC manifests using the AGENTS.md pattern, and apply large codebase telemetry strategy.

📖 Required Reading

•    Bob Shell getting started

•    Build programmatic agentic workflows with watsonx Orchestrate

•    Event-Driven Agentic AI: Kafka + Confluent + watsonx Orchestrate + Bob

•    Vibe Coding: IBM Think

🎬 Videos

•    Bob Shell in Action: Bob in Your Terminal

•    Deploy with Confidence: DevOps Plays

Bob Shell Install & Core Commands

# Verify:

bob --version

# Explain a file:

bob -p "Explain @init_db.py and list all exported functions"

# Summarise a diff:

git diff HEAD~3 | bob -p "Summarise these changes in 5 bullet points"

# Generate commit message:

git diff --cached | bob -p "Write a conventional commit message"

# IaC from architecture diagram:

bob -p "Review @01-requirements.md @02-architecture.md and implement IaC"

# OWASP ZAP security review:

bob -p "Explain and resolve the OWASP ZAP results from @report.html"

🔬 Lab This Week

•    Lab 8 Part B & C: Bob Shell automation + Tekton and Ansible DevOps manifest generation using AGENTS.md

✅ Week 8 Checklist

□    Bob Shell installed and bob --version returns a version number

□    At least 3 Bob Shell commands run from system terminal with useful output

□    git diff piped to Bob produces a conventional commit message

□    Tekton manifest generated using AGENTS.md pattern from IBM/bob-demo

□    Ansible manifest generated from IBM/bob-demo/ansible-devops

□    Telemetry-driven prioritisation plan created for a real codebase

Fortnight 4 — Lab 8: Orchestrator + Bob Shell + DevOps

Lab 8 — Orchestrator + Bob Shell + DevOps Automation

Overview

Time: ~75 min   |   Difficulty: Advanced   |   Modes: Orchestrator, Code, Ask + Bob Shell

Goal: Coordinate a multi-step feature build across modes, generate DevOps manifests using AGENTS.md, and automate with Bob Shell.

Sources: github.com/IBM/bob-demo/tree/main/tekton-devops  |  github.com/IBM/bob-demo/tree/main/ansible-devops

Part A — Orchestrator Mode: Multi-Step Feature Build

1.    Switch to Orchestrator (/orchestrator). Give this full brief:

Add a priority field (low/medium/high) to the todo API. Requirements:

1. Update the data model in db.ts

2. Update routes to accept and validate priority

3. Validate priority is one of the 3 allowed values

4. Document the API change in README.md

5. Run a security review of the new input validation code

2.    Observe delegation. Watch Orchestrator delegate to Plan, Code and Ask automatically. Approve actions in each.

3.    Override mid-task. Tell Orchestrator: "Change the priority values to low/normal/urgent instead." Watch it adapt.

4.    Verify. Build and test with Docker. Confirm priority field works and rejects invalid values.

Part B — Tekton DevOps with AGENTS.md

5.    Explore the demo.

@/tekton-devops/README.md @/tekton-devops/AGENTS.md  What does this demo do? How does AGENTS.md guide Bob?

6.    Generate Tekton manifests. Follow the README to ask Bob to generate a complete Tekton pipeline manifest using the AGENTS.md pattern.

7.    Ansible manifests. Navigate to ansible-devops/. Ask Bob to generate Ansible manifests to install and configure an HTTP server from the demo's architecture file.

Part C — Bob Shell Terminal Automation

# Install Bob Shell:

npm i -g "https://ibm.biz/bob-shell-install"

# Explain a file:

bob -p "Explain @init_db.py and list all exported functions"

# Summarise git diff:

git diff HEAD~3 | bob -p "Summarise these changes in 5 bullet points"

# Generate commit message from staged changes:

git diff --cached | bob -p "Write a conventional commit message"

# IaC from architecture diagram + requirements files:

bob -p "Review @01-requirements.md @02-architecture.md and

        implement infrastructure as code with Terraform and Ansible"

✅ Lab 8 Success Criteria

•    Orchestrator auto-delegated to at least 3 modes; mid-task override handled correctly

•    Tekton manifest generated using the AGENTS.md pattern

•    Bob Shell commands producing useful output from system terminal

•    git diff piped to Bob produces a clean conventional commit message

Key Resources

Docs: bob.ibm.com/docs   |   Download: bob.ibm.com/download

Demos: github.com/IBM/bob-demo   |   Tutorials: github.com/IBM/galaxium-travels

Videos: youtube.com/@ibm-bob   |   Product: ibm.com/products/bob

IBM Bob Customer Success Team


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