Is GitHub Copilot trained specifically on RPG?

GitHub Copilot is a general-purpose coding assistant trained broadly across many languages found in public code repositories. It is not built or tuned specifically for RPG or the IBM i development environment the way IBM Bob is.

Should I just use ChatGPT or Claude for RPG questions instead of a dedicated tool?

Developers do this informally and it can help with general explanation or small snippets, but a general-purpose chat assistant used ad hoc is not integrated into the IBM i development environment and is not tuned specifically on RPG, so treat it as a supplementary aid rather than a modernization-project tool.

Whatever happened to watsonx Code Assistant for i?

IBM previewed it in November 2025 as an upcoming, IBM i-specific coding assistant. That track was superseded by IBM Bob, which reached general availability in March 2026 and is IBM's current shipping product for this purpose.

AI Code Assistants for RPG & COBOL Compared | IBM i Guide

AI Code Assistants for RPG and COBOL Compared: What Actually Works on IBM i

Updated August 10, 2026

Ask around any IBM i shop about AI code assistants and you will hear about at least three different things: IBM's own IBM Bob, general-purpose tools like GitHub Copilot, and developers pasting RPG snippets into ChatGPT or Claude out of curiosity. These are not interchangeable, and conflating them leads to mismatched expectations.

The core distinction: IBM i-specific vs. general-purpose

IBM Bob is the only one of the three built specifically around RPG and the IBM i development environment, with code explanation, RPG generation, and fixed-to-free-format modernization support as named, purpose-built capabilities. It reached general availability on March 24, 2026, succeeding IBM's earlier watsonx Code Assistant for i preview. GitHub Copilot and general-purpose chat assistants are broad coding aids that happen to have seen some RPG and COBOL in their training data, not tools purpose-built for IBM i modernization work.

AI code assistants for RPG/COBOL, at a glance

See our full comparison page for a structured breakdown across additional axes including deployment model and typical use case.

Assistant	IBM i-Specific	Fixed-to-Free-Format Support	IBM i Integration
IBM Bob	Yes, purpose-built; GA since March 2026	Named capability	Downloadable VS Code-fork agent tuned for RPG, CL, DDS, and SQL
GitHub Copilot	No, general-purpose	Not a specific feature	General VS Code / IDE integration, not IBM i-specific
ChatGPT / Claude (ad hoc)	No, general-purpose	Not a specific feature	None; used manually outside any IDE integration

None of these tools should be treated as fully autonomous. Whichever assistant a shop uses, plan for developer review of AI-suggested RPG changes before they reach production, the same discipline you would apply to any other code change.

AI Code Assistants for RPG and COBOL Compared: What Actually Works on IBM i

The core distinction: IBM i-specific vs. general-purpose

AI code assistants for RPG/COBOL, at a glance

Sources

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IBM Bob (Project Bob)

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