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feature: IBM Bob support — detection, settings, parsed events, token and cost accounting #943
Description
Feature Description
Bob support on the agent integration contract. Bob is our internal coding agent, and this is
an internal release: Bob is an agent our own team runs, so observability for it is much of
what the release is for.
Proposed Solution
- Confirm Bob's wire format and where it stores settings — unlike the other agents there is
no public reference, so capture this in the issue before implementing - Detect an installed Bob and locate its settings
- Patch it to use
localhost:47600and the Cortex CA; ask before editing, support revert - Traffic parsed into typed events, not merely proxied
- Token counts correct for its wire format
- and cost correct
- Metrics aggregate alongside other agents
- A tool inventory, or state explicitly that tool pruning is unsupported
- Setup documented; verified depth stated
Additional Context
Part of the Cortex v0.9.0 release. Depends on the agent integration contract.
Activity
esnible commentedon Sep 11, 2026
A lot of this work has been done -- We now see token counts and usage graphs when doing
abctl exec -- bob.Do we want an
abctl bob-codein addition toabctl exec?If we are in the business of creating config-rewriters for many harnesses, should we move them into a subcommand, e.g.
abctl configure claude-code,abctl configure bob-code, etc?Feat: Group Bob traffic into its own sessions (#1058)
esnible commentedon Sep 24, 2026
Note that there are two different products that are both called "Bob":
IBM Bob (typically /Applications/IBM Bob.app, a full agentic IDE — a standalone desktop application.
Bob Shell (typically /opt/homebrew/bin/bob), the terminal/CLI counterpart
"IBM Bob" has proxy settings, e.g. in ~/Library/Application Support/IBM Bob/User/settings.json, but they affect the whole IDE, not just using Bob. It also respects env vars such as
HTTP_PROXYBob Shell does not have a proxy settings file. It respects env vars such as
HTTP_PROXYesnible commentedon Sep 24, 2026
For IBM Bob, the VSCode based IDE, we need to define the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY before launching
"/Applications/IBM Bob.app/Contents/MacOS/IBM Bob". This gives us CONNECT events, but no TLS termination and no token counts no matter if we also export NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS, SSL_CERT_FILE, etcTo see the actual traffic in authbridge, on the Mac, we must add the AuthBridge cert to the keychain using
sudo security add-trusted-cert -d -r trustRoot -k /Library/Keychains/System.keychain /Users/snible/.cortex/ca/bundle.crtIf we don't want to use env vars, then $HOME/Library/Application Support/IBM Bob/User/settings.json defines
[-]feature: Bob support — detection, settings, parsed events, token and cost accounting[/-][+]feature: IBM Bob support — detection, settings, parsed events, token and cost accounting[/+]esnible commentedon Sep 24, 2026
The command history seems to be shared with Bob Shell. See #1119 (comment) for format.
feat: Identify Bob Shell by its trailing User-Agent product token
feat: Add the AGENTS pane's data model and its single-agent skip rule
feat: Register the AGENTS pane and make its four gates deliberate
feat: Open the AGENTS pane with A, and refuse it out loud below two a…
feat: Add abctl cost --agent, and pay the disclosure it owes
test: Make the residual disclosure's guard actually able to fail
refactor: Give the series ranking one definition in core
feat: Add abctl cost --by, with a dash for unpriced and a word when t…
feat: Carry a billing unit from config to the ledger, and refuse to a…
fix: Stop abctl pricing claiming dollars for an endpoint that bills i…
docs: Document billing units, and stop using Bob as an unfixable example
esnible commentedon Oct 1, 2026
Closing without tool inventory. If IBM Bob users request tool pruning, we will create a new issue.