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WorldReady: IBM Bob takes an app global
The workflow. WorldReady improves application maintenance and release: retrofitting localization into an existing app, then keeping new code world-ready on every PR. The problem. Entering a new market is a code problem. Quebec's Bill 96 requires French; Gulf and MENA growth requires Arabic: RTL layout and Arabic-locale dates, currency and plural forms. Translation alone cannot fix what breaks: strings hard-coded in JSX, glued plurals ("1 seats left"), physical left/right layout, English baked into data and toasts. And one hard-coded string added later ships broken UI. Baseline (Galaxium Travels, Apache-2.0, English-only): 305 hard-coded user-visible strings, one language, no dir attribute, 12 physical left/right classes. The solution. IBM Bob retrofits that app into English + French (Québec) + Arabic (RTL), then installs a gate that keeps new English out. Bob extracts every user-visible string into i18next keys (five parallel subagents), wires Intl formatting, CLDR plurals, logical RTL utilities and mirrored icons, and adds a PreToolUse commit hook + GitHub Actions gate that fails the build on new hard-coded strings (PR #1: red → green). Human in the loop: the owner decided 5 flagged translations (7 cells), recorded in the translator sheet; Bob read the .xlsx back and applied all 7. Who uses it. Product teams entering regulated or RTL markets, and agencies retrofitting client apps: run Bob's i18n-extractor mode, review machine-draft translations, merge; the gate protects every later PR. Judges use a live comparison viewer: pick العربية and the app mirrors to RTL; press Scan and hard-coded English is outlined (home view: Before 47–48, After 0), beside the six-form Arabic plural showcase. Why it is unique. Lingo.dev, i18next-parser and Crowdin extract or translate; none fix the code traps and install a regression gate. TransCreate localizes developer videos; WorldReady localizes app code: keys, plurals, formatting, RTL, and a gate. Accessibility tools such as Usher and CurbCut ask whether everyone can use the app; WorldReady asks whether every market can. Measured impact (independent verifiers). Hard-coded user-visible English 305 → 0; 24/30 engineered i18n traps fixed (frozen; held-out key, SHA-256 committed before any Bob task ran); 0 characters of existing English changed; 1 → 3 languages plus a pseudo-locale; key-parity PASS; physical left/right classes 12 → 0; Arabic plural forms 6/6. Effort (Bob's measured time). 348 strings extracted into keys in about 12 minutes (five parallel subagents); the whole retrofit took about 40 minutes of Bob time across 16 product tasks, not counting translation (untimed: an API outage broke its clock). Who built what. The product i18n work was done by IBM Bob 2.0 across 19 tasks (19.41 of 40 Bobcoins); independent verifiers, the demo mock and deploy plumbing were written separately so Bob never graded itself. Sessions: bob_sessions/. Live: https://chinmoypaul8897.github.io/worldready/
27 Sep 2026
