Bob Shell

Bob Shell brings IBM Bob's AI coding assistant directly to your command line, enabling you to build, debug, and understand code through natural language conversations — interactive or fully headless.

Install

Install the @ibm/bob package globally from the public npm registry with your package manager of choice.

npm

npm install -g @ibm/bob

yarn

yarn global add --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org/ @ibm/bob

pnpm

pnpm add -g --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org/ @ibm/bob

Authentication

Bob Shell authenticates via an API key or SSO.

API key — set the BOB_API_KEY environment variable:

export BOB_API_KEY="your-key"

SSO — run the bob command to start Bob Shell in interactive mode and follow the login prompt in your browser.

Usage

bob [options] [command]

Options:
  -v, --version              Show current version number
  -p, --prompt <prompt>      Prompt to send to the agent
  -r, --resume [task-id]     "Resume a specific task (optional: id, default is latest)"
  --list-tasks [limit]       List available tasks (optional: number or 'all', default 20)
  --show-license             Show full paths to license files for review
  --accept-license           Accept the IBM license agreement and continue
  -h, --help                 Display help for command

Commands:
  chat [options] [prompt...]  Launch the interactive terminal UI client
  run [options] [prompt...]   Execute a single task in headless mode
  mcp [options]               Manage MCP server configurations
  acp [options]               Start Bob Shell as an Agent Client Protocol server

Launch interactive chat:

bob

Launch interactive chat with an initial prompt:

bob "Explain the structure of this repository"

Run a single task:

bob run "What are the top-level directories in this workspace?"

Resume the latest task:

bob --resume latest

Editor integration (ACP)

bob acp runs Bob Shell as an Agent Client Protocol server, so ACP clients like Zed can drive Bob from their agent panel:

{
    "agent_servers": {
        "Bob": {
            "command": "bob",
            "args": ["acp"]
        }
    }
}

Docs

• Welcome to Bob Shell — overview of capabilities and key concepts
• Installing & setting up — get Bob Shell running on your system
• Interactive sessions — conversational terminal sessions for exploratory tasks
• Non-interactive sessions — automate and script with bob run
• Configuration — settings, custom modes, and slash commands
• MCP servers — extend Bob Shell with Model Context Protocol integrations
• Usage examples — real-world patterns to get you moving faster
• FAQ — common questions answered

More from IBM Bob

Bob Shell is one part of the IBM Bob family. The same AI coding assistant is also available as a full IDE experience.

Explore IBM Bob →