Onboarder Bob: From Codebase to First PR

Joining an unfamiliar codebase can take days: newcomers must find entry points, understand dependencies, discover the testing workflow, and choose a small first contribution without breaking the project. Onboarder Bob helps developers and maintainers shorten that path. It is built from my existing Onboarder application, preserving its original visual design and explorer, CLI, diagrams, deep analysis, search, and MCP features. A user scans a local folder or Git repository, explores the architecture, then opens the new First PR view. That view reads the actual scanned files, maps entry points and shared modules, cites file and line evidence for onboarding gaps, ranks small starter tasks, and exports a Markdown brief. A user can then click Refine with IBM Bob: the server sends that brief to the official IBM Bob Shell in read-only ask mode, and Bob returns a focused implementation sequence, files to inspect, verification steps, and uncertainties. The browser never receives the Bob API key. This combines deterministic, traceable repository analysis with IBM Bob’s reasoning, so contributors can begin with a plan they can check against the code. It is useful for open-source maintainers, new teammates, and engineering educators.