Bob skills for ADK

Bob skills provide specialized, high-signal instruction sets that teach Bob (and other compatible AI coding assistants) how to design, build, evaluate, and maintain IBM watsonx Orchestrate solutions.

Bob skills vs. watsonx Orchestrate Agent skills:

Bob skills (documented here) run inside Bob or other developer tools on your local machine. They assist engineers with authoring architectures, SOPs, agents, tools, workflows, and analyzing artifacts. They do not run inside the watsonx Orchestrate runtime.
Agent skills (documented under Build → Agent skills) run inside watsonx Orchestrate agents at runtime to provide modular capabilities to end-user agents.

All Bob skills are maintained in the ibm-watsonx-orchestrate-adk repository.

Available Bob skills

Skill	Purpose	Key capabilities	Documentation
Agentic Workflow Advisor	Analyzes agentic workflow JSON artifacts and returns prioritized architecture recommendations	Runs 6 static detection checks (parallelization, unmapped inputs, deterministic routing, schema size, tool efficiency, prompt node substitution)	Agentic Workflow Advisor
solution-architect	Transforms business problem statements into structured solution architectures	Generates executive summaries, technical design patterns, and implementation roadmaps	solution-architect
sop-builder	Converts technical procedures and workflows (BPMN, Langflow, n8n) into Standard Operating Procedures	Produces business-readable SOPs with plain-language steps, Mermaid diagrams, and exception rules	sop-builder
wxo-builder	Implements production-ready watsonx Orchestrate solutions from SOPs or prompts	Generates agents, tools, flows, and knowledge bases following ADK project conventions	wxo-builder
wxo-analyzer	Reverse-engineers and documents existing watsonx Orchestrate projects	Produces 3-report documentation sets, component relationship diagrams, and anti-pattern analysis	wxo-analyzer
agent-instructions-evaluator	Evaluates a specific agent’s instructions for operational achievability and production viability	Scores across 5 dimensions, detects reliability risks (hidden state, brittle phrasing), outputs structured JSON	agent-instructions-evaluator

Solution lifecycle workflow

Together, these skills form a closed-loop system for designing, building, validating, and maintaining watsonx Orchestrate solutions:

solution-architect establishes high-level architecture, component selection, and integration design.
sop-builder elaborates business and technical flows into detailed, validated Standard Operating Procedures.
wxo-builder generates production-grade ADK agents, tools, workflows, and knowledge bases.
wxo-analyzer maps component relationships, generates documentation, and checks for project-level anti-patterns.
Agentic Workflow Advisor performs static analysis on workflow JSON artifacts to catch latency and routing issues.
agent-instructions-evaluator inspects agent instructions to verify operational reliability and eliminate runtime failure modes.

Setting up skills in Bob

Skills are distributed as directories containing a SKILL.md file (along with optional supporting reference documents and scripts).

1. Add skill files to your project or user profile

Bob discovers skills from two standard locations:

Location	Scope	Recommended for
`<project>/.bob/skills/`	Project-specific	Team repositories — commit skills alongside your project code
`~/.bob/skills/`	Global	Personal workspace — available across all projects on your machine

Create a folder for each skill under .bob/skills/ and copy the SKILL.md file from the ADK skills repository:

your-project/
└── .bob/
    └── skills/
        ├── agentic-workflow-advisor/
        │   └── SKILL.md
        ├── solution-architect/
        │   └── SKILL.md
        ├── sop-builder/
        │   └── SKILL.md
        ├── wxo-builder/
        │   └── SKILL.md
        ├── wxo-analyzer/
        │   └── SKILL.md
        └── agent-instructions-evaluator/
            └── SKILL.md

2. Verify discovery in Bob

Open Bob Settings → Skills.
Confirm that the installed skills appear in the list with their names and source paths.
If a skill does not appear, verify that the directory contains a valid SKILL.md file with a YAML frontmatter block containing name and description.

3. Activating skills in conversation

Bob uses progressive disclosure to activate skills:

Automatic activation: Bob matches your prompt against skill descriptions and loads the appropriate skill instructions into context when relevant.
Explicit activation: You can invoke a skill directly by name in your prompt (for example, "Use the Agentic Workflow Advisor to review this flow").

Resources

ADK Skills Repository — Source files for all ADK Bob skills
Bob Skills Documentation — Complete guide to authoring and configuring skills in Bob
Agent Skills in watsonx Orchestrate — Guide to runtime skills for watsonx Orchestrate agents

Release Notes

Get Started

Build

Deploy

Analyze

Developer experience

Legal notices

Available Bob skills

Solution lifecycle workflow

Setting up skills in Bob

1. Add skill files to your project or user profile

2. Verify discovery in Bob

3. Activating skills in conversation

Resources

​Available Bob skills

​Solution lifecycle workflow

​Setting up skills in Bob

​1. Add skill files to your project or user profile

​2. Verify discovery in Bob

​3. Activating skills in conversation

​Resources

Available Bob skills

Solution lifecycle workflow

Setting up skills in Bob

1. Add skill files to your project or user profile

2. Verify discovery in Bob

3. Activating skills in conversation

Resources