
Developers often spend significant time manually debugging even small codebases. A typical workflow requires reading source code, identifying potential bugs, thinking of edge cases, writing tests, running those tests, diagnosing failures, fixing defects, and then rerunning the complete test suite. This process is repetitive and can leave important edge cases insufficiently tested. BobFix is a lightweight, hackathon-focused solution that demonstrates how IBM Bob 2.0 can improve this developer workflow. The project contains a small intentionally buggy Node.js codebase with calculator, user, and order modules, an initial test suite focused on happy-path behavior, and an original dataset containing 10 bug and test scenarios. The target users are software developers who need to debug and test application code efficiently. The developer opens the BobFix repository in IBM Bob IDE and follows a structured workflow. Bob first analyzes the repository, source code, existing tests, documentation, and bug dataset. The investigation is then divided into module-level tasks so that calculator, user, and order logic can be examined independently. Bob subsequently generates tests designed to expose missing edge cases and seeded defects. The tests are executed, and Bob analyzes failures to distinguish genuine application defects from incorrect tests or assumptions. Genuine defects are then repaired, followed by complete regression testing and coverage verification. The central workflow is: **Analyze → Investigate → Generate Tests → Execute → Diagnose → Repair → Verify → Report** The creative aspect of BobFix is that IBM Bob is not used simply as a coding assistant. It is used as the central tool coordinating an end-to-end developer workflow involving repository understanding, parallel investigation, test generation, debugging, code repair, and verification. The project also provides a manual-versus-Bob benchmark. Metrics such as time spent, tests created, bugs discovered, bugs fixed, test coverage, and manual steps can be measured using the same repository and actual workflow runs. BobFix is intentionally small and transparent so that the complete workflow can be demonstrated during a hackathon presentation. The repository also contains an original bug-scenario dataset and documentation for capturing IBM Bob task-session evidence.
27 Sep 2026