Introduction to Bob Shell
Learn to use Bob Shell, IBM Bob's AI coding agent for the terminal, in hands-on tutorials that build and extend the Galaxium Travels demo app.
IBM Bob Shell is an AI software development lifecycle (SDLC) partner. It works inside your existing workflows and helps you understand, plan, and improve real codebases. It offers proactive insights and keeps you in control at every step. In these tutorials, you use Bob Shell to work on the Galaxium Travels fictional luxury space travel booking system.
What you will learn
The tutorials help you set up Bob Shell and learn how to use it to plan, write, and run agentic software development workflows from the command line. You will give Bob persistent project context with /init and AGENTS.md, write effective prompts, and create reusable skills.
Prerequisites
Before you start, set up the following:
To confirm Bob Shell is installed, open a terminal and check the version:
bob --versionArchitecture of the Galaxium Travels demo app
Galaxium Travels contains the following full-stack architecture:
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Front end | React, TypeScript |
| Back end | Python with REST and Model Context Protocol (MCP) interfaces |
| Database | SQLite with seed data |
Front end
The React/TypeScript front end connects to the back-end REST endpoints and presents the data through a user-facing interface. Features available in the front end include:
- Flight search
- User registration and authentication
- Flight booking
Back end
The back end includes:
- Data models that define the domain entities: flights, users, and bookings
- Schemas for data validation and structure
- Seed data for development and testing in a SQLite database
The server exposes two interfaces:
- REST API: Standard HTTP endpoints for front-end and client consumption
- MCP interface: Lets Bob interact with the back end as a tool
An API browser interface is available locally to explore and interact with the back-end endpoints without the front end. Use it to test flight retrieval, user registration, and booking.
Next steps
In this introduction, you learned that Bob supports the full software development lifecycle, not only code generation. You remain in control at every step and Bob assists you with reasoning and implementation.
Advance to Start a project with /init and AGENTS.md to learn how Bob Shell uses the /init command to set up context in a new or existing project.
Usage examples
Practical examples showing how to use Bob Shell for debugging, code improvement, file creation, documentation generation, and learning new concepts.
Start a project with /init and AGENTS.md in Bob Shell
Run the Bob Shell /init command to generate AGENTS.md, a project context file Bob loads in every conversation, and learn how to keep that context current.