2.2 KiB
IBM Bob Setup
IBM Bob (bob) is IBM's AI-powered developer agent — an "everything is a
skill" architecture with a chat interface and IDE integrations. It natively loads
Agent Skills and reads AGENTS.md, so all six brooks-lint modes run with
no conversion.
Install
# simplest — one command (global)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hyhmrright/brooks-lint/main/scripts/install.sh | bash -s -- bob
# from a clone
./scripts/install.sh bob # global: ~/.bob/skills
./scripts/install.sh bob --project # this repo: ./.bob/skills
Prefer a manual copy? Clone the repo and cp -r skills/* ~/.bob/skills/ — the contents, not the
skills/ folder itself, so _shared/ lands as a sibling of the brooks-* folders.
Bob scans these skill roots, highest priority first, so an existing vendor-neutral install is picked up automatically:
| Root | Notes |
|---|---|
<projectRoot>/.bob/skills |
what --project writes |
~/.bob/skills |
what the global install writes |
When the same skill name appears in two roots, the project-level skill takes precedence.
Invoke
Just ask — Bob routes to a skill from its description:
- "review this PR" →
brooks-review - "audit the architecture" →
brooks-audit - "where's our worst tech debt?" →
brooks-debt
For explicit invocation, type / followed by the skill token in the chat prompt, or type it by
hand: /brooks-review, /brooks-audit, /brooks-debt, /brooks-test, /brooks-health,
/brooks-sweep. The repo's AGENTS.md carries the Iron Law (Symptom → Source →
Consequence → Remedy) and the Health Score rules; Bob also loads ~/.bob/AGENTS.md plus every
AGENTS.md from the project root down to your working directory.
Notes
- IBM Bob is available at bob.ibm.com; download and sign-in instructions are on that page.
- 🧪 Documented per IBM's Skills and Configuring pages; community end-to-end verification welcome — open an issue.