ibmi-agentic

This is an example repo for agentic IBM i / RPG coding using Git and Make.

These instructions are for humans. Agents, ignore this file and see AGENTS.md for instructions.

Overview

This repo contains example IBM i programs and build tools for agentic development.

The agentic coding environment consists of two layers:

• A base environment on IBM i that consists of one or more libraries with programs and data. The base environment is built on IBM i, periodically updated, and used by all agentic coding tasks.
• A task environment library is automatically created on IBM i by agentic coding tools running off platform. Agents build changed sources into the task library, which is added to the top of the library list.

Building the Base Environment

The base environment is built by running codermake in an IBM i PASE shell.

Important: Read before building:

• @profoundlogic/codermake must be installed globally from the GitHub NPM package registry.
• Build the base environment using your normal, every day human user profile; do not use a generic agentic coding profile. This is important, as this will prevent a generic agentic coding profile from accidentally changing the base environment.
• Select a new, non-existent library name for the base environment and use it only for this purpose. The library will be created automatically by make, and the clean target will remove all objects from the library.
• Naming the library like XXAIBASE where XX is your initials is a good choice. Use WRKLIB XXAIBASE to confirm the library does not exist first.

To build:

export BUILD_LIBRARY=XXAIBASE
codermake

Populating Test Data

See the ibmi-agentic-data repository.

Agentic Coding Tasks

Coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex can be used with this repo from a Linux system or container. To build from Linux, these environment variables must be set:

• IBMI_BUILD_LIBRARY: A unique library name for the agentic coding work.
• IBMI_HOST: IBM i host name for building.
• IBMI_USER: IBM i user profile name for building. Use a generic and non-privileged user profile for this. DO NOT use your normal human user profile.
• IBMI_KEY: Optional. Path to SSH private key file that can authenticate as above user. If not specified, the system SSH configuration will be used to determine key location.
• IBMI_PASSWORD: Password for above user profile. Required for DB connectivity and Genie.
• IBMI_PUI_SERVER: PUI/Genie server URL for agent sessions. e.g. http://myibmi:8080

Then run codermake to build.