Create application features

IBM Bob is an agentic integrated development environment (IDE) that helps you write, test, upgrade, and secure software across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC). In these tutorials, you use Bob to add features to the Galaxium Travels fictional luxury space travel booking system.

In this tutorial series, you do the following:

• Set up Bob in the Galaxium Travels repository
• Standardize Bob's behavior with custom rules
• Create a custom mode to help with product management tasks
• Write code with Bob's AI-assisted code completion features
• Use Bob's literate coding capabilities to generate code from written text
• Use Bob's agentic capabilities to have Bob run prompts and perform actions on your behalf
• Understand how to manage the context window effectively to maintain quality and reduce cost

• Clone the Galaxium Travels demo code. The clone command also checks out the bob-learning-path-branch that contains the code you use in the tutorials.

If you want to clone through the Bob IDE, follow the Clone the tutorial repository section of the quickstart tutorial.

• Bob IDE with the Galaxium Travels demo code open
• While not required, consider doing the Quickstart tutorial to familiarize yourself with Bob's interface and features.

Galaxium Travels contains the following full-stack architecture:

The React/TypeScript front end connects to the same back-end REST endpoints and presents the data through a user-facing interface. Features available in the front end include:

• Viewing available flights
• User registration and authentication
• Flight booking

The back end is built around a SQLite database that contains:

• Data models that define the domain entities (flights, users, bookings).
• Schemas for data validation and structure.
• Seed data for development and testing.

The server exposes two interfaces:

• REST API: Standard HTTP endpoints for front-end and client consumption.
• MCP interface: Lets Bob interact directly with the back end as a tool.

An API browser interface is available locally to explore and interact with the back end endpoints directly, without the front end. This lets you test operations such as flight retrieval, user registration, and booking.

In this introduction, you learned that Bob supports the full software development lifecycle, not just code generation. You remain in control at every step and Bob assists you with reasoning and implementation.

Advance to Start a project to learn how Bob uses the /init command to set up context in a new or existing project.