DEMO

Spec-Driven Development With IBM Bob

Build a production-ready application starting from a use case specifications in natural language. Starting with zero code, IBM Bob spawns a team of subagents that build, containerize then deploy an application to IBM Cloud in 15 mins.

Building Blocks used:

Skills used

Download skills for IBM Bob →

Products Used

1 Review use case

This demo is a use case wrapped within a use case. The application's use case is a product ordering website for travelers needing supplies that can survive the rigors of space. Travelers use agentic search (powered by OpenSearch) to research available products then use full shopping cart functionality.

This demo's primary use case is to educate partners on the power of Spec-Driven Development, which allowed IBM Bob to build the Orbital Suppliers using only natural language documents, UI design images, dataset requirements and backend endpoint APIs. This highlights how enterprise development teams build production quality solutions. More up-front documentation and less interactive vibe coding.

Partners can use the provided Specifications (in natural language not code) which IBM Bob can use to rebuild this entire demo.

Start Here

Watch this short overview

Preview the application

Explore key screens from the demo

2 Try the interactive application

Experience the interactive demo and explore its features. A demo script is provided to help when presenting the application to partners.

Try the demo

Have questions, want a walkthrough or found a bug?

Contact the demo owner for assistance.

Submit a request →

3 Explore how it was built

Architecture

High level overview of major demo components

Specifications Workflow

IBM Bob executes these Specifications to build this demo.

4 Download and modify with IBM Bob

Download the source code and specifications for this application to set up and run it locally. Once downloaded, open the code in IBM Bob to modify and adapt it to your own use case.

Specifications

Source Code

Orbital Suppliers

You should start with the fact that AI Engineers are shifting from Vibe Coding to Spec-Driven Development to build applications. Explain that this demo was built from zero code using only these natural language specifications describing the app to-be-built. IBM Bob reads the specifications plus any required Skills for IBM Building Blocks to have the knowledge about best practices and up-to-date knowledge for using IBM products.

So this demo has two personae:

Fictional space travelers which use the Orbital Outfitters retail website to purchase supplies
AI engineers that would have written the Specifications describing the website

The Orbital Suppliers retail website was chosen as a use case that is easy for anyone to understand. Building this retail website starting from zero-code shows the power of Spec-Driven Development while also provided re-usable specifications around IBM’s products that partners can use to develop their own solutions.

Persona 1: Applcation Users / Space Travelers

First demo the website’s functionality then shift to the specifications used to build it.

Start from the home page and show that this is not a typical vibe coded website. The website looks professionally designed with consistent colors and provides rich functionality:

agentic search
product pages
shopping cart
account screens
historical orders

From the home page, click on a provided natural language search example to open the agentic search screen. Explain that IBM Bob designed the AI agent handling the user’s search and then deployed it to watsonx Orchestrate based solely on the 5-agent-product-search.md specifications. In addition, IBM Bob followed the 2-rag-opensearch.md specification to vectorize product info then deploy into an OpenSearch vector database.

All Specifciations are provided in the GitHub repo for this demo.. So now would be a good time to show a specification to your partner to help clarify what specifications looks like.

After refining the search by asking additional questions, click on one of the products to view details about it. All product content is pulled from a product database including descriptions, images and 5-10 reviews for over 100 products. IBM Bob followed the other Specifications to determine how to access the database, build all the screens then containerize the app before deploy everything to Red Hat OpenShift in IBM Cloud.

Show other website functionality as needed.

Persona 2: AI Engineers

Shift to showing your partner the folder containing all the Specifications for this demo. They are ordered by the flow that IBM Bob would follow when bulding the website.

Explain that you understand enterprise websites are built by teams, not solo coders vibing a simple POC. That’s why specifications are highly detailed documents that centralize all knowledge plus artifacts from the various team members. Specifications document all of this up-front to avoid needless rework and token costs of incrementally feeding knowledge to IBM Bob.

For example, the 4-frontend-ui.md specification provides the on-brand color palette plus screen comps in /specifications/frontend/design-mockups which are professionally designed image for each screen of the website. Note the 6-backend-frontend.md which Bob follows prior to containerizing the deploying to IBM Cloud.

Deploy everything to Red Hat OpenShift in IBM Cloud

Specifications 7-11 provide the instructions for deploying to IBM Cloud and provide re-usable examples for how your partner can use IBM Bob to execute these same tasks. At the top of each Spec, you will see reference to Skills for IBM Building Blocks that Bob uses to obtain up-to-date knowledge about IBM technologies.

Explain that partners should download these skills for use in their own solutions. Offer a Spec-Driven Development workshop where the IBM Build Engineering team can walk your partner through best practices in applying Spec-Driven Development within their own team.