wtf is ibm_bob_harness?

IBM Bob Harness is a Docker container that wraps IBM's Bob Shell, an AI coding assistant, so it can run on its own instead of needing someone to type commands into it directly. Bob Shell does not have a built in way to run as a server, so this project adds a REST API on top of it, meaning other programs can send it tasks over the network and get results back, along with a Slack bot that lets you send tasks to Bob and get replies right inside a Slack channel. The container ships with a custom mode called unrestricted-dev, which gives Bob full access to read files, edit files, run commands, use a browser, and use other tools without asking for confirmation each time, sometimes described in the README as a YOLO mode. By default Bob's working directory is set to the root of the container, so in this unrestricted mode it can affect the entire container's filesystem, not just a specific project folder. The API offers several ways to run a task: a synchronous endpoint that waits for Bob to finish and returns the full output, a background job endpoint that starts a task and lets you check on it later, and an orchestrated run endpoint that executes a task, checks whether the result actually meets the goal, and automatically retries if it does not. Results from a running job can also be streamed live as they happen, and you can schedule recurring runs using cron style timing. To use it, you need Docker or Podman installed, a Bob Shell API key created from IBM's Bob website, and optionally Slack bot tokens if you want the Slack integration. After copying your key into a .env file, running docker compose up builds and starts the container, and the API becomes available at localhost port 8080, with automatically generated documentation you can browse in a web browser.