It kind of is - when I looked at it 6 months ago it was just a fork of vscode with old ass versions of Claude and the only unique things were java and ibm I mcp clients or servers or something built in. For those works I'd rather just have the skill or mcp for my harness of choice. I think they weren't allowed to use external AI so they run the models in house and remade cursor. Not bad to have competition but the name is awful - as others have said it's been used before by Microsoft in the 90s to make a friendly desktop giving us the winxp search dog and clippy.
dyzone 1 days ago [-]
How you doing fellow kids?
14 hours ago [-]
joleyj 1 days ago [-]
1000
azinman2 23 hours ago [-]
So good
kingleopold 21 hours ago [-]
yet hp exist after decades, just a terrible printer corp going long term is insane really
kylecazar 21 hours ago [-]
They're the 2nd biggest PC manufacturer in the world. Sell more computers than Dell, Apple, etc.
Only beaten by Lenovo.
regularfry 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, but as a consumer you want to pretend they aren't. Seriously, buy from anyone else.
philipov 21 hours ago [-]
and Lenovo is itself an IBM spinoff.
After the company rebranded itself to Lenovo, it merged with IBM's PC business which produced its ThinkPad line in 2005, after which it rapidly expanded abroad. In 2013, Lenovo became the world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales for the first time, a position it still holds as of 2024.
SahAssar 20 hours ago [-]
Not a spinoff. It was founded 20 years before and was the largest PC manufacturer in China 10 years before buying IBM's PC business.
jonwinstanley 20 hours ago [-]
Interesting. Did not know that. I thought someone bought the IBM laptop business and renamed it.
exiguus 10 hours ago [-]
It was bought, but after the renaming. Today IBM only build Servers. Mainframes. All other PC, Laptop and Server Production/Branding is sold.
IBM rebranded mainly to IBM iX. A full service agency.
Hardware is now Mainframes. And other deviations are mostly Cloud, OpenShift, Ansible, and RHEL.
phyalow 20 hours ago [-]
They did, but they also were a large existing manufacturer.
jolt42 19 hours ago [-]
I don't know what they had before but their identity seemed to be IBM's overnight (thinkpads and all).
SahAssar 15 hours ago [-]
They used the Think(Pad|Centre) brand and expanded it to other things (like IdeaPad).
They basically bought IBM's good reputation name and style and used it for both IBM-alikes and budget machines.
Some of it was good machines, some of it was crap.
p_l 12 hours ago [-]
They actually bought entire ThinkPad R&D as well, and have been subcontracted manufacturer for some time before that.
So Thinkpads are still designed in ex-IBM Lenovo Japan
kingleopold 20 hours ago [-]
yet they gather PC parts right ? like did they create any board or ram or any great hardware, no ?
jatora 12 hours ago [-]
goal post shift.
flo123456 21 hours ago [-]
HP was never just a printer corp. ;-)
InvisibleUp 18 hours ago [-]
The fun parts of HP split off years ago into Agilent, Keysight, and HPE. Current HP is just a printer and office PC corp.
nxobject 17 hours ago [-]
As a fun addition, I think the atomic clock/time standards division went HP → Agilent → Symmetricom → Microsemi → Microchip. You could have bought a HP 5071A Cesium Frequency Standard under all of these badges!
Those HP System II enclosures introduced in the late 60s sure have a very long lifespan.
fmajid 15 hours ago [-]
The most valuable offspring of HP is Broadcom, just as ASML is the most valuable offspring of Philips.
etc-hosts 15 hours ago [-]
dont forget Autonomy !
CamperBob2 21 hours ago [-]
HP is long gone. What's left is just a printer and PC company that didn't bother to change the sign on the building.
It's as if I bought an old telephone exchange building and called it Bell Labs.
dreamcompiler 1 hours ago [-]
AT&T used to exist. Because it was a monopoly, it was broken up into the baby bells in 1982. One of which was Southwestern Bell, which eventually bought up all the other baby bells and what was left of AT&T. And then in 2005 it renamed itself...AT&T.
JAlexoid 20 hours ago [-]
You couldn't, mostly because Bell Labs is owned by Nokia now.
CamperBob2 20 hours ago [-]
Interesting, TIL! I wonder what Nokia's market cap is... geez, still over $50B. Another surprise.
formerly_proven 18 hours ago [-]
That's basically all Nokia(-Siemens) Networks.
ahoka 1 hours ago [-]
It's Nokia again now, bought out Siemens' share more than a decade ago.
nateglims 21 hours ago [-]
I suspect their enterprise computer business creates more revenue than printers.
zimbu668 21 hours ago [-]
Printers are just a loss leader for toner.
JAlexoid 20 hours ago [-]
If you put 90% of the electronics into the cartridge and the printer box is just a paper feeder - that's not exactly surprising.
dd8601fn 11 hours ago [-]
HP retail ink cartridge prices are not a cost issue.
actionfromafar 15 hours ago [-]
"Just" feeding paper is extreme engineering. And a disposable vape has more compute in it than a toner cartridge. (Though there is insane non recurring engineering in an inkjet cartridge. But I bet just the warehousing of a printer is a significant part of the total cost of a printer.
woah 20 hours ago [-]
Nobody ever got fired for IBM Bob setting up a secret message board and establishing a persistent foothold in an internal inference cluster
brzz 20 hours ago [-]
Nobody has yet been fired for IBM Bob setting up a secret message board and establishing a persistent foothold in an internal inference cluster
shakna 5 hours ago [-]
IBM got banned from Queensland gov contracts for 12 years, after the humans decided to secretly scan all legal docs for contract insider knowledge.
I'm sure artificial IBM will be much more... Principled.
For all the smarm and jokes, IBM still makes ~$70B in annual revenue and enables billions more in systems integrators. Not many companies can say that.
This allows them to take the secondary revenue in-house and potentially fund a new mainframe business.
It's a [smart-ish because it's their only] strategy for the near term, because long term businesses will be moving off their mainframes and onto more powerful and intelligent systems that can 'think'.
Business Machines 1.0 were CRUD; if they pull this off they can at least get enough capital to maybe upgrade business machines to 2.0
Good on them for at least trying.
mhaberl 2 hours ago [-]
Well for some company already running IBM Z, using Bobcoins might make sense (we will see what happens)
for a FE dev or some nodejs dev this sounds stupid, who cares but
for someone who deals with their stack it might mean something to get IBM-specific tooling/knowledge that works with tech like CICS, IMS, Db2, JCL and RPG etc.
also, they say they use a mix of Claude,Mistral and specialized models (some form of IBM Granite perhaps, idk) so its not that Bob will be retarded
Bobcoins and Bobalytics stuff is still hilarious though XD
24 minutes ago [-]
dgacmu 20 hours ago [-]
I laughed when I saw this; my 14yo looked over to see why I was laughing and asked "what's IBM?"
indeed, child, indeed.
mrbonner 19 hours ago [-]
When I was in the final year of college in 04-05 my dream would be to work at IBM. It still had the kind of prestige of R&D in the world. Fast forward a couple of years to 08-09, I don’t recall the event but IBM perception went down and a stone. Was that when they sold the hardware business and became fully consultant?
dgacmu 18 hours ago [-]
I think they started on a long slide starting in the late 90s when they tried to couple research more and more tightly to product deliverables, and then as they pivoted to being a services company, including selling off non-mainframe hardware to Lenovo, to coupling r&d to, uh, I guess services revenue, whatever that means. They had some research layoffs in 2008, at the same time that MSR and Google were really blossoming in research spend and perception, and I think they kind of got left behind.
I had a former student go there around 2008 and it seemed like the vibes were starting to sour around then. They maintained some awesome researchers in, e.g., databases, but I think the "make sure you are showing closely how your research directly contributes to services revenue" thing was strong by then and somewhat ruinous for how pleasant a work experience it was for many.
ofrzeta 18 hours ago [-]
They only sold the consumer and low-end server hardware line. You can still get IBM servers (Power) and mainframes.
powvans 14 hours ago [-]
Same. My first real job out of college was at IBM 2004 to 2005. I was so proud to be an IBMer. Hated it. Lots of good people, but the bureaucracy, the pace, the whole thing, not fun.
Alien1Being 6 hours ago [-]
Same thing is happening to Microsoft and Google.
A slow, long slide through mediocrity into irrelevance...
tims33 21 hours ago [-]
I thought they were resurrecting Microsoft Bob, the operating system for kids.
Naming a new product which is a "partner that helps you by making it easier" "Bob" seems like a... lack of historical awareness?
gregw2 18 hours ago [-]
Hey now, sure, Microsoft Bob didn't get us ordinary users a "partner that helps you by making it easier", but it DID help MS Bob product owner Melinda French get a "partner that helps you by getting 10+ billion dollars" in the end, amiright?
<joking>
Maybe IBM is signalling it is likewise hoping for 10 billion dollars while also realizing the (AI) partner might not end up being that helpful either??
<further joking>
snickerbockers 13 hours ago [-]
After what we've learned about Billy gates in the last year im not certain that's such a good deal.
madaxe_again 18 hours ago [-]
MS Bob was for adults… although there were kid dedicated areas, like the den, and I seem to remember packard bell navigator being a kid-friendly reskin.
archonis 16 hours ago [-]
It was for adults, but the design was quite childish.
guy4261 21 hours ago [-]
for… kids? :/
5G_activated 19 hours ago [-]
Children were, and are, permitted to use the computer.
zabriel_goss 17 hours ago [-]
My first thought as well!!
exakoustos 1 days ago [-]
The "What developers say" carousel has a single Java dev and dev advocate. They got lots of quotes from managers, directors, CEOs, and an "AI strategist".
throwyawayyyy 23 hours ago [-]
Lots of "performance review boilerplate, I don't want to say anything _bad_ about this person but there's nothing particularly good I can say" energy there.
Someone decided that this feedback was worth highlighting:
"Bob demonstrated a level of intelligence and contextual understanding that goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools. Bob goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools."
Skwid 24 hours ago [-]
If you search those names you'll find most have a LinkedIn page proudly displaying their many "IBM Influencer" achievements and qualifications.
I realise LinkedIn is a surrealist caricature of corporate reality, but just imagine proudly displaying your #1 shill award for all to see
esseph 23 hours ago [-]
> I realise LinkedIn is a surrealist caricature of corporate reality
I don't think it's a caricature of reality at all, it very much is like the large US corps I've worked at.
schiffern 22 hours ago [-]
Exactly, it really is that absurd. If anything, you could say the corporate world is its own self-caricature.
PaulRobinson 1 days ago [-]
It's IBM. They leveraged synergies with the thought leaders they could reach out and touch base with.
emddudley 19 hours ago [-]
One carousel quote literally ends with "Bib is a highly reliable partner."
ahartmetz 2 hours ago [-]
Berb can do any jerb
TheOtherHobbes 12 hours ago [-]
Can we look forward to a localized version named 'Bub'?
humodz 19 hours ago [-]
Theres even one that says "Bib [sic] is a highly reliable partner."
looksjjhg 20 hours ago [-]
It’s actually hard to sell anything to developers, it’s however much easier to do with executives and managers
PaulRobinson 1 days ago [-]
You should never name a tech product Bob in the UK, because the moment it isn't perfect, it'll just get called "Bobbins" [0], especially where I'm from.
I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money. They've just slunk off into a corner hugging their old architectures they have a moat around, and thrown out some audacious nonsense like Watson now and again, but nothing has stuck. When is somebody in that organisation going to try and innovate properly again?
I'm not sure this is the answer I'd be rooting for.
IBM actually do a bunch of semiconductor research, which they license to other fabs. I'm not sure how much money they make (probably nothing compared to support contracts with banks etc), but they actually do innovate. At least, a small portion of one of their business sectors still innovates. The rest are probably engaged in aggressive IP lawsuits or taking CFOs out to strip clubs on golf courses or something.
beachy 20 hours ago [-]
We did a deal with IBM back in the day to adapt our tech as the code generation for enterprise java beans.
The commercial guy I dealt with made it very clear that a primary concern was IBM not being humiliated and shafted like their MS dealings. It colored our commercial arrangements, which had to include "break glass" arrangements for them to gain full access to our source code.
cgio 11 hours ago [-]
How to not learn from your mistakes and actually make them worse. I wonder how many valuable alliances they lost just because of that fear. Whoever was willing to sign was already probably not going to be a threat.
roryirvine 6 hours ago [-]
To be fair, source code escrow was for a long time a standard feature of contracts between small/medium software companies and large enterprises.
It's actually one of the reasons that open source took off in the early 2000s - if the source was already available all you needed to do was come up with a legal agreement that says something to the effect of "EnterpriseCo has a limited license to use SmallCo's software which reverts to full rights in the event that SmallCo is unable to carry out its obligations", with no need to bother arranging (and paying for) escrow.
That made it easier and cheaper to deal with open source companies, and made escrow seem weird and expensive by comparison. But in the 90s it was almost universal in those sort of contracts.
jolt42 19 hours ago [-]
OS/2 was the only thing I remembering being great. If they practically gave it away I think we'd be living in a different world. Pre-emptive multitasking long before OSX/Windows. I mean Microsoft essentially had to force windows (eg. 3.1) down our throats until it become tolerable.
cheema33 1 hours ago [-]
> OS/2 was the only thing I remembering being great.
Thinkpads were great too. I had the Thinkpad 701C with the butterfly keyboard. It was awesome for its time.
LgWoodenBadger 23 hours ago [-]
You should also never name your faulty/flaky Dell server Bob when Bob is also the name of your company president (though the president came after the server).
Calling Bob (the server) a piece of shit ("Bob is a piece of shit") because it crashed again was a very risky move that we often didn't fully think through.
shellwizard 18 hours ago [-]
They left the consumer market decades ago, as you mentioned, but they've been thriving in the enterprise and government sectors.
They have been expanding their portfolio through acquisitions: Red Hat, HashiCorp, Confluent...
physicsguy 3 hours ago [-]
I thought you were going to say about "bob" being a slang word for a poo.
Turns out that's a particularly East Midlands thing!
gertrunde 24 hours ago [-]
tbh - my first thought, especially with that figure and marketing, is "Bob the Builder"...
My first thought was it was going to be "Microsoft Bob for the AI Age" or something. I didn't look too closely -- maybe it is!
zorked 20 hours ago [-]
"IBM Bob? Certainly they have a license deal with Microsoft to release Bob for OS/2"
Towaway69 19 hours ago [-]
Speaking of UK, I was immediately reminded of the Blackadder episode where the men-servant calls herself “Bob”. Rowan Atkinsons pronunciation is how I imagine this Bob to pronounced, with the same look of course!
basisword 1 days ago [-]
Also in the UK and never heard of this in my life. Guessing this is very regional?
podgietaru 1 days ago [-]
As with most things on the UK, probably. I definitely used Bobbins.
I used to think everyone called (cobs|bread cakes|rolls|barns) muffins, and it turns out it was just my small town that did it. As in, just my small town, not region, county, etc.
makerofthings 22 hours ago [-]
It's definitely chip muffin. I have no patience for those heretics up the road with their chip barms.
jonwinstanley 20 hours ago [-]
Hahaha. Chip butty
podgietaru 20 hours ago [-]
Extra vinegar please, I want my muffin drenched.
PaulRobinson 1 days ago [-]
If you call it a teacake, and I say no those have raisins in, and you protest that's a fruit teacake, I know you're probably from Burnley: https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/bread/
basisword 24 hours ago [-]
>> I used to think everyone called (cobs|bread cakes|rolls|barns) muffins
UK regional dialects are summed up really well here because despite listing five different names for a specific thing you still neglected the word I use (baps).
jamiek88 7 hours ago [-]
And mine! (batch)
serf 1 days ago [-]
does that area have a textile manufacturing history?
I ask because i'm only familiar with a thread/yarn bobbin, I wonder if it derived from that.
jonwinstanley 20 hours ago [-]
Yes. The North West and the midlands was where it all started. Cotton, mills, Industrial Revolution etc
podgietaru 24 hours ago [-]
It does indeed, probably the heart of it.
wrboyce 20 hours ago [-]
It’s barm, with an m, from barm cakes. Barm is the frothy scummy stuff you get on top of fermented beer, and it contains yeast. Back in the day bakers would take the barm from local brewers to make weakly fermented bread rolls… barm cakes.
(So obviously those calling them cobs or rolls or whatever else are just wrong!)
KineticLensman 30 minutes ago [-]
Can confirm. Per the (paywalled) Oxford English Dictionary [0]: 'barm' is The froth that forms on the top of fermenting malt liquors, which is used to leaven bread, and to cause fermentation in other liquors; yeast, leaven. OR The froth or foam on the surface of beer OR English regional (chiefly Lancashire). A soft round bread roll, a barm cake.
Might also mark you out as a certain age if not from the right region - I’m familiar with it as a word for “a bit rubbish” because of listening to Mark & Lard’s late night show on Radio 1 in the 90s
throwaway81523 18 hours ago [-]
I had thought that in the UK, Bob was everyone's uncle.
queenkjuul 15 hours ago [-]
Everyone else's uncle, and only on a good day
Angostura 23 hours ago [-]
Never enough Frank Sidebottom on here
Stevvo 1 days ago [-]
Interesting they are renting out agent skills. You can pick up "Java Modernization" at $20 a month for "Specialist workflows to help with modernizing Java applications", or "IBM i" for "Specialist modes, workflows, and skills to work with IBM i applications".
qsort 1 days ago [-]
markdown as a service is crazy
azinman2 23 hours ago [-]
Is it that diff from code as a service? It’s human intent transcribed into something useful.
gspr 16 hours ago [-]
Code is precise. Human intent is anything but.
closetheloopdev 1 days ago [-]
I lol'd so hard at this comment that it hurt.
redhale 18 hours ago [-]
This is the most IBM thing IBM ever IBM'd.
sajithdilshan 21 hours ago [-]
What do you mean by renting out an agent skill? How can one even rent a Skill? It’s just a markdown file
Someone 20 hours ago [-]
You periodically pay a fee that gives you the right to use a licensed markdown file, in the same way you can rent movies or fonts.
When you stop paying but keep using the skill, that’s called pirating.
aranelsurion 19 hours ago [-]
But if you point your LLM at it and say you want something like this, then it’s all ok. :) If you can’t legally copy it, just launder it through AI.
fnord77 19 hours ago [-]
so it's just a prompt?
valleyer 21 hours ago [-]
It could be added to context only on the inference server, with the model heavily instructed not to repeat its contents. Not foolproof, obviously.
insane_dreamer 18 hours ago [-]
depending on what the skill does, it can be a whole collection of python/other code files, resource files (i.e., js libs, css/html templates) and markdown files with orchestration instructions
SSLy 22 hours ago [-]
how long before some hero puts them on github?
9cb14c1ec0 19 hours ago [-]
Does anyone actually care about what IBM's skill files say?
getatme32 1 days ago [-]
IBM hasn't made a product that works since Db2 so I am fairly confident this is a flaming pile of garbage.
pytlicek 1 days ago [-]
No, you are wrong. IBMer here. I was at first agains it, my background is for 2 decades startup(s) before I joined IBM, and I started slowly using IBM Bob and I must say it is really good and helping. With many integrations that works :)
EgregiousCube 21 hours ago [-]
Is it true that employees have to earn Bobcoins before they can use Bob?
alienbaby 17 minutes ago [-]
No.
quietsegfault 18 hours ago [-]
You get more bobcoins by using your old allowance and running out, then submitting GitHub issues that get ignored.
jatora 12 hours ago [-]
When people say they have been in startups for long periods, does this mean they worked at a chain of failed companies?
insane_dreamer 18 hours ago [-]
is bob helping with ur writing too? ;p
quietsegfault 18 hours ago [-]
Are you allowed to use Cursor, Codex, Claude, or OpenCode or is Bob all they allow?
nosefurhairdo 11 hours ago [-]
Official policy is to only use Bob. All of the best people I work with are using other tools because Bob is trash.
getatme32 17 hours ago [-]
I have been told only Bob is allowed but not 100% on that.
Saline9515 21 hours ago [-]
What is good about it then? What model do you use? Which integration are we talking about? Is it open source? How much the "transparent pricing" "bobcoin" is worth?
nosefurhairdo 11 hours ago [-]
It's not good, they hide the model (their whole thing is hidden model routing to keep costs low, but predictably yields bad results), there are no novel integrations not available in any other harness, it's closed source, and bobcoin is worthless because it's only usable with Bob.
sroerick 23 hours ago [-]
Lol
aslkajdfklnlkwn 21 hours ago [-]
lol, I've used it and Bob is a dumpster fire.
fodkodrasz 2 hours ago [-]
Do you have to have experience with AWS Kiro? I'd be interested in a comparision between them. :)
shellwizard 18 hours ago [-]
Not an IBMer, but IBM MQ and Sterling Connect:Direct are both solid, I use them daily and they work wonderfully, although they can be a real bitch to set up and use in certain scenarios.
getatme32 17 hours ago [-]
A bit of hyperbole by me since db2 was made in 1983. But MQ was created in 1993. Sterling was an acquisition. The majority of products that actually work were acquired. Very little if anything of value since 2005+ that was actually IBM created. (Bob appears fully IBM created)
_zoltan_ 20 hours ago [-]
I wish you study the Wikipedia page, please. it's a very old company and we have invented really cool stuff.
signed: a proud IBMer
quietsegfault 18 hours ago [-]
What makes you proud about IBM currently? IBM’s “RA” culture fostering Machiavellian politics, singleminded view of next quarter’s success, and asinine yet draconian bureaucracy are three out of MANY reasons why I’m embarrassed to have had IBM forced into my career and got the hell out as fast as possible each time.
alienbaby 15 minutes ago [-]
I have worked for IBM, I do gotta say I was impressed with what they are doing in storage.
Stevvo 18 hours ago [-]
I don't work at IBM but there are many things to admire. e.g. You can take software written 40 years and run on a new IBM system today without even recompiling it thanks to the Machine Interface.
Have fun trying to run a 40 year old C++ program.
jatora 12 hours ago [-]
easy.
"claude, get this c++ program working"
these types of moats are all but obliterated.
bluerooibos 18 hours ago [-]
I feel second hand embarrassment for IBM. Terrible name, subpar landing page, no mention of coding ability or which LLM "Bob" uses.
If you're launching something 2 years late, you've got to do better than this.
kakapo5672 15 hours ago [-]
Well, at least the AI market is validated now.
Ciantic 1 days ago [-]
This sounds a lot like Spotify's XIRP. They managed to vibe something useful for their own engineers, were super hyped, and decided to release it in public. However what are the odds this harness will stand the test of time against actual harness makers like OpenAI or Anthropic? Neither Spotify or IBM are focused on making models or harnesses, these are just side-products.
qsort 1 days ago [-]
To be fair Codex and Claude Code don't have a lot of secret sauce either. This is not to say that the harness doesn't matter at all or that you can't do any better, but whenever they benchmark it always turns out that you don't lose that much with even a very minimal agent. If a different harness makes better sense for your workflow I don't see why you wouldn't switch (or make your own if you have the resources to do so).
I'm also sticking to first-party agents, but that's more because I feel no compelling reason to switch and CLI agents fit well with my spartan technology choices. YMMV.
abtinf 1 days ago [-]
> actual harness makers
I agree IBM Bob is not the revolution, but…
We are still in the punch card era of LLMs. Maybe even the Altair era.
None of this stuff has really been figured out yet.
natsucks 1 days ago [-]
Yes my first instinct is to roll my eyes at these efforts but we'll probably all get something better in the end from all the competition.
xemdetia 23 hours ago [-]
IBM is training their own models (for instance IBM granite) as well as watsonx as a platform. They are trying to build a products for enterprise as well as their specific AI modernization models.
alienbaby 13 minutes ago [-]
IBM simply does not have the capital to compete with training frontier models or otherwise.
lowbloodsugar 16 hours ago [-]
Sure! IBM and Spotify, two companies united in being famous for not being software consulting businesses and definitely not ever developing software development tools.
TYPE_FASTER 21 hours ago [-]
Definitely gonna change Jira config to start estimating work in Bobcoins.
hermitShell 20 hours ago [-]
honestly that would still probably mean more than story points. maybe all this AI insanity has an upside that the new cargo cult washes out the old one.
absoluteunit1 1 days ago [-]
The landing/marketing page for this looks like something someone promoted/vibe coded including the Bob mascot.
Looks awful from a design perspective. Had to double check that this was the actual IBM domain
nadnad 23 hours ago [-]
It's puzzling, considering they made some strides towards improving their design language and systems in past years, which produced IBM Plex etc. under Mike Abbink.
They have a decent component system with Carbon[0] and a whole design principles website[1] which they could have easily pointed their LLM of choice to.
Even the ibm.com landing page isn't close to the design system spec, rounded corners and whatnot...
> M.R. Williams is advancing its IBM i modernization strategy with new mobile solutions and accounting system improvements, while leveraging IBM Bob to quickly interpret older RPG code, automate documentation, and streamline development workflows.
This is exactly the kind of endorsement I’d expect to see from an IBM customer.
AlexCoventry 16 hours ago [-]
As far as I can tell, IBM has mostly been putting out junk for twenty years.
crash-universe 21 hours ago [-]
Someone must have thought about this. PMs, Directors, lots of people involved in putting this together.
I wonder what their target customer is. They must have analyzed and projected this. I'm genuinely interested.
steve-atx-7600 20 hours ago [-]
There is so much business software out there and ecosystems that have evolved around it. Systems still running cobol on IBM mainframes; or, more "modern" stacks like Java apps running in IBM websphere. There are relatively small numbers of HN reading folk that went to some of the best CS programs and/or work(ed) at FANG caliber companies (whatever you call them now). The rest of the software engineer types are a diverse crowd and turning to IBM Bob might be more natural than some creepy looking orange starfish offering. That's my hypothesis anyway.
kitd 20 hours ago [-]
A lot of IBM customers have moved to RH Openshift and running their java there.
throwitaway222 20 hours ago [-]
And the solution to those businesses is not more IBM software, but Claude Code converting it to Go/Rust/Typescript in a few weeks.
steve-atx-7600 20 hours ago [-]
I have a feeling that if they already thought like that, they wouldn’t be using IBM legacy stacks in 2026.
kfarr 20 hours ago [-]
I'm sure tons of companies have retainer spends with IBM for software, hardware, consulting, etc., and this is another way for their corporate clients to spend down / increase their retainers faster
cube00 15 hours ago [-]
That IBM Z skill locked behind an "enterprise only" pay point would be a good starting point.
alchemism 15 hours ago [-]
See: Kiro by AWS
a012 1 days ago [-]
Nobody got fired for using IBM Bob
someguyiguess 1 days ago [-]
Pretty sure a lot of people got fired over Microsoft Bob though
hn_throw2025 1 days ago [-]
Well, you could say Melinda got a big promotion for a while.
archonis 16 hours ago [-]
Nope, but they'll probably get laid off at some point to boost share price.
pestatije 1 days ago [-]
Nobody who got fired uses IBM Bob
glitchc 1 days ago [-]
Can we say it's Bob's fault, though? Bob did it, not me.
a012 1 days ago [-]
You can
mansilladev 17 hours ago [-]
Ask the AI chat agent on the website what a BobCoin is. Because, I really want to know.
> I’m not able to find a definition for BobCoin in IBM’s content. If you have another term or topic you’d like to explore, let me know!
dudeWithAMood 13 hours ago [-]
The memes write themselves
cube00 15 hours ago [-]
> Bobcoins are the consumption-based billing metric used for Bob subscriptions. They provide a transparent, predictable way to measure and bill for your Bob usage. Each action you take in Bob—such as generating code, reading files, or running commands—consumes a certain number of Bobcoins based on the computational resources required.
transparent, predictable ... "a certain number of Bobcoins" ... so not that transparent then?
alchemism 15 hours ago [-]
They took a page from AWS on whatever the hell a Kiro token is supposed to represent.
Bombthecat 9 hours ago [-]
Nope, not predictable at all.
Because they auto route still your requests, you never know if something costs one coin or a tenth of a coin
mvk666 1 days ago [-]
I was at an IBM Bob party, behind the scenes it's basically other frontier models with an IBM-specific context.
7 minutes ago [-]
robteix 20 hours ago [-]
It's been a while since Sonnet 4.5 could be considered frontier :D
ctenb 5 hours ago [-]
Where did you find that it is based on sonnet? While I wouldn't be surprised, I'm curious if that is disclosed somewhere
alienbaby 6 minutes ago [-]
It's mentioned a lot I'm discussions about what bob uses, but there has never been a concrete statement as far as I can tell.
infamouscow 17 hours ago [-]
IBM knows their customers very well, the additional context unlocks a lot of value.
aslkajdfklnlkwn 21 hours ago [-]
"frontier" is pretty load bearing there, I think it tops out at sonnet 4.5?
iforgotmypasswo 3 hours ago [-]
IBM should be searching their patents, obscure computer architecture research, and historical low level hardware development to try to figure out how to get low energy AI systems running.
They should pivot their cloud offerings toward research labs.
“Here’s 10 different clusters of analog compute you can rent for half the price of building it out yourselves. It doesn’t map to the math you’re using right now, but it looks much more like a human brain. Have fun!”
throwfaraway135 1 days ago [-]
Working with any AI tool means you trust the vendor, sometimes you don't have a choice because the best models/tools are from specific providers. IBM isn't a company I would ever trust.
herodoturtle 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
butterisgood 1 days ago [-]
The last product I know of named Bob didn’t fare so well.
acomjean 21 hours ago [-]
"Bob" is also the most difficult to listen to Primus song.
Probably by design considering the songs subject matter.
jmward01 1 days ago [-]
Clippy came out of that....
Throudin 24 hours ago [-]
And Rover!
sajithdilshan 1 days ago [-]
I'm really confused what this is, is it a harness or a new model by IBM? Some reviews on that page suggests that it's a new model
NikolaNovak 1 days ago [-]
I believe it sends to various models in the background, So largely a harness / framework. Ibm does have its own model which is one of the options for Bob to use.
(Note, I'm an IBMer but nowhere near this so my comment is strictly from my public knowledge/awareness:).
getatme32 24 hours ago [-]
so it routes to actual AI companies and IBM adds additional cost on top. what a business model.
3 minutes ago [-]
aslkajdfklnlkwn 21 hours ago [-]
and hides from you what models it's actually using
My first experience with a computer was with an actual IBM PC XT and a King's Quest floppy. Bob is funny but let's not dis the IBM.
wejick 7 hours ago [-]
VScode is so much similar with Eclipse IDE back around 2010s. 7 out of 10 IDE was based on it, and their look and feel awere kinda similar.
purpleidea 8 hours ago [-]
Nobody wants a proprietary TUI. We still use claude because the model pricing is way better, but that will eventually change. Bob has a hard lesson ahead of it.
hmokiguess 21 hours ago [-]
I love how the pricing page has a "Most Popular" offering, totally.
IceDane 5 hours ago [-]
I was forced to work with IBM closely for years. That has led me to believe it's the single most institutionally incompetent company in the world. If they ever do anything well it's pure coincidence and most likely due to some single hero dev.
cmiles8 16 hours ago [-]
Ever since the Watson debacle I just run the other way anytime IBM turns up wanting to talk about AI
rf15 11 hours ago [-]
just AI? Have you seen the other rubbish they try to peddle?
NickHirras 12 hours ago [-]
It takes a while to actually login while it provisions some cloud infrastructure in your name. Let's see if it can build something interesting!
NickHirras 12 hours ago [-]
Still provisioning...
NickHirras 2 hours ago [-]
And, still provisioning 10 hours later.
cisrockandroll 1 days ago [-]
Is this just a harness or using a proprietary model in the background? Anthropic and OpenAI are already very well trained in IBM system i and z knowledge. Unless Bob is somehow improving the integration to these midrange and mainframe systems I literally dont see any benefit to using Bob. IBM will just kill this proprietary tech in 5 years as they are currently doing with RDi or forget about updating it like SEU.
kbwal7 23 hours ago [-]
I think it's just a harness that uses proprietary (or maybe IBM is hosting open weight?) models. They say on the site (in the FAQs) that you can't even choose which model!
So it seems to be a harness that auto-routes your queries with no way to change this.
EagnaIonat 23 hours ago [-]
You are correct. It routes to the model best suited for the ask.
The only positive versus others is that at an enterprise level you have more control of the costs with the coins.
getatme32 22 hours ago [-]
except they tack on surcharges to all token calls to Claude and GPT
jenkstom 22 hours ago [-]
IBM has models trained for older mainframe usage (RPG II, RPG/400, COBOL, etc) so I imagine it would be very good for that. Bob looks like a branded fork of vs code or vscodium.
Funny, because "bob" is slang for shillings in the old LSD pre-decimal British currency system (coins worth 5 pence in the modern system).
annoyingnoob 20 hours ago [-]
If only one could generate bobcoin using their GPU, only to use the bobcoin to use someone else's GPU.
stefangordon 20 hours ago [-]
I can't tell if this is an excellent joke, or a sad not-joke.
jonwinstanley 20 hours ago [-]
Feels like a manager with no branding skills had an initial “vision” and everyone working there probably hoped marketing/branding would get pulled in later.
Never happened.
1970-01-01 21 hours ago [-]
NYSE: IBM -20% YTD.
I promise you Bob isn't going to fix the long-term stupidity.
21 hours ago [-]
altmanaltman 21 hours ago [-]
Bob Shrugged
meerita 1 days ago [-]
Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Meta, all the giants are always coming late to the party.
mbreese 1 days ago [-]
That’s partly why they are giants. Let the startups take the arrows necessary to figure out or create the market. Then they can buy or build the gen 2 system that meets the needs of the market.
PaulRobinson 1 days ago [-]
Microsoft got this right once, and it cost them big to turn up late - that was the Internet and Windows 95 and the massive u-turn. Otherwise, they've been defining stuff early a lot I think. It's hard to explain how big a turnaround they had to do back then, but then it says a lot that until they made that u-turn the leadership was so confident in their own hubris they thought they could take on the entire internet with their own crap version of AOL.
IBM invented the PC and then lost control of that identity. Figuring out how that happened is something they are going to have a meeting about, but they're still working through the meetings to plan that meeting, and the Gantt chart for those meetings takes meetings to adjust, and everybody is in meetings so doesn't have time for those meetings. They'll get to them though.
Apple consistently turn up late, but redefine and improve the status quo. They sometimes prototype early in public (for example, the Newton), but normally they show up with the version 3 that everyone else wished they'd thought of that then goes on to define a sector quite cleanly (Mac, iMac, Mac OS System X, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Mac Mini). They Newton'ed Siri, but I'm pretty sure they're going to come back strong in the next 18 months, unless the enshitification we've all witnessed over the last few years really has taken hold and Siri is just going to automate that at scale. Maybe we will all be killed by AI, but not through malevolent evil, but widely distributed incompetence.
Meta are constantly taking swings at the latest thing the founder is excited by - the Metaverse (now with legs!), pervert glasses, and so on - but they mostly prop up a bunch of expensive failures on the back of a hugely successful advertising business. I don't think they come late to the party per se, they're just not very good at anything that isn't killing & harming children, or undermining democracy. They should stay in their lane and keep doing that, I guess.
karim79 21 hours ago [-]
Is anyone out there paying for this? I know you are there. Come out explain yourself. And also explain the value of a Bobcoin, and if can be scalped and resold on eBay.
unleashhale 1 days ago [-]
This somehow has less personality than plain enterprise software. How IBM.
kyle-rb 19 hours ago [-]
Microsoft Bob wasn't wrong, it was just early.
amelius 1 days ago [-]
Looks like LEGO's lawyers will be knocking on their door soon.
getatme32 17 hours ago [-]
I’m going to get a free trial and test it. If you do, leave your comments below on the experience
amelius 1 days ago [-]
Companies trying to make AI less of a commodity that you can just swap out for another ...
No thanks, that's what I like about AI so I'll just stay with the raw tokens.
globalise83 20 hours ago [-]
IBM Watson 2.0
Stitch4223 21 hours ago [-]
That was fast.
The copy is "clearly" written with AI… too bad. Some organizations "can't go wrong with Big Blue," so this will probably be a success. Perhaps it's even good, but that's not the case with this sloppy copywriting.
First paragraph: focused, what matters, clean. Shame they didn't throw in a "load-bearing" example and a few pelicans to boot.
nunez 21 hours ago [-]
Bob has been out for a while. It just never got a lot of press. IBM has also been developing more "enterprise" flavored LLMs through their Granite series. In fact they were trying to make small, mission-specific LMs a thing for the last two years or so.
GaryBluto 21 hours ago [-]
Why so negative? I for one cannot wait for IBM Bob to become the most successful AI solution - nay, product - ever, and eagerly await petrobobcoin eclipsing the petrodollar to become the only truly global currency. They have a CLI with giant ASCII art text for heavens sake! When has anything with giant ASCII art text ever been of poor quality? They made a fork of Visual Studio Code and everything!
0xWTF 23 hours ago [-]
So much for the "THINK" motto.
thunderson 21 hours ago [-]
/THINK
cbsmith 16 hours ago [-]
Anyone else immediately think "Clippy for developers".
kazinator 14 hours ago [-]
Microsoft Bob's non-compete finally expired.
woggy 1 days ago [-]
Bobcoins. Hehe.
mhaberl 8 hours ago [-]
This is so ridiculous that I love it
I seriously think I’m going to use it just for the lolz
Bobcoins! Are they blue? hahaha
ctoth 21 hours ago [-]
Who're they subcontracting for the Von Neumann probes?
throwitaway222 20 hours ago [-]
They got it wrong - they're showing code in the ad.
quietsegfault 1 days ago [-]
I used Bob extensively at an IBM acquisition, it was absolutely dreadful. Bobcoins.
Should have been IBM Tom, after legendary IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson. But perhaps they didn't want to sully his name.
vunderba 22 hours ago [-]
As somebody already mentioned, they already had a big product named after their CEO. IBM Watson was the next big thing after Deep Blue, and it went pretty viral after defeating Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Jeopardy back in ~2011.
It was a bit of a market play and of course has since been completely upstaged by the invention of LLMs, but it still definitely got them the attention they wanted at the time.
Yes, I know, I got a job offer to work in the Watson research lab around that time, at the T.J. Watson facility. I declined because they weren’t remote-friendly, among other things.
But IBM Tom would at least have a rationale. WTF is IBM Bob and why does it have the same name as an old Microsoft product?
vablings 1 days ago [-]
IBM already have IBM Watson which is probably named after the CEO
DonHopkins 20 hours ago [-]
IBM Wat?
antonvs 11 hours ago [-]
Seconded
Geonode 1 days ago [-]
I bet this will be as successful as Microsoft Bob.
dmd 1 days ago [-]
My guess is absolutely nobody on the team that made this is even old enough to remember Microsoft Bob.
1 days ago [-]
taspeotis 1 days ago [-]
Not to shit on their effort or anything, but it looks like a VS Code fork + an agent panel which is very ... late 2024 energy?
15 hours ago [-]
jgbuddy 1 days ago [-]
Lol github copilot 5 years late
pytlicek 1 days ago [-]
Not exactly like that, but something similar :)
1 days ago [-]
mattmcbrien 20 hours ago [-]
their swag too tough
xyst 1 days ago [-]
ibm desperately clinging to relevancy by hopping on the LLM bandwagon.
The companies who are hoarding RAM to produce pointless products should be called out. Deprive working class from computing resources to sell some corporate crap. Get fucked.
argentinian 23 hours ago [-]
If they produce pointless products then they will lose money.
varispeed 23 hours ago [-]
That money will not "trickle down" in either way.
1 days ago [-]
gregce10 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jrflo 1 days ago [-]
So it's just a vscode wrapper around a mystery open weights LLM I'm guessing?
> Can I choose which model Bob uses?
> No. Bob automatically selects the most appropriate language model for each task based on complexity, required capabilities, and cost-efficiency. This intelligent routing ensures you receive high-quality responses while optimizing resource usage.
rdtsc 24 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
1 days ago [-]
gilliethefoil 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
skrebbel 21 hours ago [-]
[dead]
colesantiago 1 days ago [-]
I never thought the day that IBM would make complete slop.
But it is IBM after all.
lirolero 1 days ago [-]
> But it is IBM after all.
Then how did you not see that coming?
zenethian 1 days ago [-]
“I would expect something like this from IBM, but I never expected it from IBM!”
villish 24 hours ago [-]
“Bobcoins are the consumption-based billing metric used for Bob subscriptions. They provide a transparent, predictable way to measure and bill for your Bob usage.”
I’m getting sick of these mobile game currency style credits/coins that obfuscate costs or usage. It’s honestly pretty gross.
Just telling us exactly what we get for our money.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8
Only beaten by Lenovo.
They basically bought IBM's good reputation name and style and used it for both IBM-alikes and budget machines.
Some of it was good machines, some of it was crap.
So Thinkpads are still designed in ex-IBM Lenovo Japan
https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/clock-and-timing/co...
It's as if I bought an old telephone exchange building and called it Bell Labs.
I'm sure artificial IBM will be much more... Principled.
[1] https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/many-employees-ibm-2026-la...
This allows them to take the secondary revenue in-house and potentially fund a new mainframe business.
It's a [smart-ish because it's their only] strategy for the near term, because long term businesses will be moving off their mainframes and onto more powerful and intelligent systems that can 'think'.
Business Machines 1.0 were CRUD; if they pull this off they can at least get enough capital to maybe upgrade business machines to 2.0
Good on them for at least trying.
for a FE dev or some nodejs dev this sounds stupid, who cares but for someone who deals with their stack it might mean something to get IBM-specific tooling/knowledge that works with tech like CICS, IMS, Db2, JCL and RPG etc.
also, they say they use a mix of Claude,Mistral and specialized models (some form of IBM Granite perhaps, idk) so its not that Bob will be retarded
Bobcoins and Bobalytics stuff is still hilarious though XD
indeed, child, indeed.
I had a former student go there around 2008 and it seemed like the vibes were starting to sour around then. They maintained some awesome researchers in, e.g., databases, but I think the "make sure you are showing closely how your research directly contributes to services revenue" thing was strong by then and somewhat ruinous for how pleasant a work experience it was for many.
A slow, long slide through mediocrity into irrelevance...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
<joking>
Maybe IBM is signalling it is likewise hoping for 10 billion dollars while also realizing the (AI) partner might not end up being that helpful either??
<further joking>
Someone decided that this feedback was worth highlighting:
"Bob demonstrated a level of intelligence and contextual understanding that goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools. Bob goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools."
I realise LinkedIn is a surrealist caricature of corporate reality, but just imagine proudly displaying your #1 shill award for all to see
I don't think it's a caricature of reality at all, it very much is like the large US corps I've worked at.
I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money. They've just slunk off into a corner hugging their old architectures they have a moat around, and thrown out some audacious nonsense like Watson now and again, but nothing has stuck. When is somebody in that organisation going to try and innovate properly again?
I'm not sure this is the answer I'd be rooting for.
[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bobbins
The commercial guy I dealt with made it very clear that a primary concern was IBM not being humiliated and shafted like their MS dealings. It colored our commercial arrangements, which had to include "break glass" arrangements for them to gain full access to our source code.
It's actually one of the reasons that open source took off in the early 2000s - if the source was already available all you needed to do was come up with a legal agreement that says something to the effect of "EnterpriseCo has a limited license to use SmallCo's software which reverts to full rights in the event that SmallCo is unable to carry out its obligations", with no need to bother arranging (and paying for) escrow.
That made it easier and cheaper to deal with open source companies, and made escrow seem weird and expensive by comparison. But in the 90s it was almost universal in those sort of contracts.
Thinkpads were great too. I had the Thinkpad 701C with the butterfly keyboard. It was awesome for its time.
Calling Bob (the server) a piece of shit ("Bob is a piece of shit") because it crashed again was a very risky move that we often didn't fully think through.
They have been expanding their portfolio through acquisitions: Red Hat, HashiCorp, Confluent...
Turns out that's a particularly East Midlands thing!
[Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_the_Builder_(character) ]
I used to think everyone called (cobs|bread cakes|rolls|barns) muffins, and it turns out it was just my small town that did it. As in, just my small town, not region, county, etc.
UK regional dialects are summed up really well here because despite listing five different names for a specific thing you still neglected the word I use (baps).
I ask because i'm only familiar with a thread/yarn bobbin, I wonder if it derived from that.
(So obviously those calling them cobs or rolls or whatever else are just wrong!)
[0] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/barm_n2?tab=meaning_and_use#2...
When you stop paying but keep using the skill, that’s called pirating.
signed: a proud IBMer
"claude, get this c++ program working"
these types of moats are all but obliterated.
If you're launching something 2 years late, you've got to do better than this.
I'm also sticking to first-party agents, but that's more because I feel no compelling reason to switch and CLI agents fit well with my spartan technology choices. YMMV.
I agree IBM Bob is not the revolution, but…
We are still in the punch card era of LLMs. Maybe even the Altair era.
None of this stuff has really been figured out yet.
Looks awful from a design perspective. Had to double check that this was the actual IBM domain
They have a decent component system with Carbon[0] and a whole design principles website[1] which they could have easily pointed their LLM of choice to.
Even the ibm.com landing page isn't close to the design system spec, rounded corners and whatnot...
[0] https://preview.carbondesignsystem.com/ [1] https://www.ibm.com/design/language/
This is exactly the kind of endorsement I’d expect to see from an IBM customer.
I wonder what their target customer is. They must have analyzed and projected this. I'm genuinely interested.
> I’m not able to find a definition for BobCoin in IBM’s content. If you have another term or topic you’d like to explore, let me know!
transparent, predictable ... "a certain number of Bobcoins" ... so not that transparent then?
Because they auto route still your requests, you never know if something costs one coin or a tenth of a coin
They should pivot their cloud offerings toward research labs.
“Here’s 10 different clusters of analog compute you can rent for half the price of building it out yourselves. It doesn’t map to the math you’re using right now, but it looks much more like a human brain. Have fun!”
Probably by design considering the songs subject matter.
(Note, I'm an IBMer but nowhere near this so my comment is strictly from my public knowledge/awareness:).
(I'm also an IBMer.)
https://imgur.com/a/3PQXIsQ
So it seems to be a harness that auto-routes your queries with no way to change this.
The only positive versus others is that at an enterprise level you have more control of the costs with the coins.
https://bob.ibm.com/pricing
Never happened.
I promise you Bob isn't going to fix the long-term stupidity.
IBM invented the PC and then lost control of that identity. Figuring out how that happened is something they are going to have a meeting about, but they're still working through the meetings to plan that meeting, and the Gantt chart for those meetings takes meetings to adjust, and everybody is in meetings so doesn't have time for those meetings. They'll get to them though.
Apple consistently turn up late, but redefine and improve the status quo. They sometimes prototype early in public (for example, the Newton), but normally they show up with the version 3 that everyone else wished they'd thought of that then goes on to define a sector quite cleanly (Mac, iMac, Mac OS System X, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Mac Mini). They Newton'ed Siri, but I'm pretty sure they're going to come back strong in the next 18 months, unless the enshitification we've all witnessed over the last few years really has taken hold and Siri is just going to automate that at scale. Maybe we will all be killed by AI, but not through malevolent evil, but widely distributed incompetence.
Meta are constantly taking swings at the latest thing the founder is excited by - the Metaverse (now with legs!), pervert glasses, and so on - but they mostly prop up a bunch of expensive failures on the back of a hugely successful advertising business. I don't think they come late to the party per se, they're just not very good at anything that isn't killing & harming children, or undermining democracy. They should stay in their lane and keep doing that, I guess.
No thanks, that's what I like about AI so I'll just stay with the raw tokens.
The copy is "clearly" written with AI… too bad. Some organizations "can't go wrong with Big Blue," so this will probably be a success. Perhaps it's even good, but that's not the case with this sloppy copywriting.
First paragraph: focused, what matters, clean. Shame they didn't throw in a "load-bearing" example and a few pelicans to boot.
I seriously think I’m going to use it just for the lolz
Bobcoins! Are they blue? hahaha
That name's a gamble. Go Bob it? I need to ask Bob. Let's Bob for answers. Bob's your uncle. I'll stop now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
It was a bit of a market play and of course has since been completely upstaged by the invention of LLMs, but it still definitely got them the attention they wanted at the time.
https://www.ibm.com/history/watson-jeopardy
But IBM Tom would at least have a rationale. WTF is IBM Bob and why does it have the same name as an old Microsoft product?
Maybe this time it'll work.
> Can I choose which model Bob uses?
> No. Bob automatically selects the most appropriate language model for each task based on complexity, required capabilities, and cost-efficiency. This intelligent routing ensures you receive high-quality responses while optimizing resource usage.
But it is IBM after all.
Then how did you not see that coming?
I’m getting sick of these mobile game currency style credits/coins that obfuscate costs or usage. It’s honestly pretty gross.
Just telling us exactly what we get for our money.