OnboardOps: A Custom Bob Mode for Repo Onboarding

OnboardOps is built around a custom IBM Bob /onboard command and onboarding mode. Instead of asking a new developer to manually inspect docs, files, routes, commit history, and issues, the onboardee runs /onboard in Bob and enters a structured Socratic onboarding flow for the current repository. The custom Bob mode drives the session: it maps the repo, emits live dashboard events through our institutional-knowledge MCP server, asks practice questions, waits for answers from the website, grades certification responses, and then proposes a starter PR path. The dashboard is the visual control plane for Bob’s work, showing dependency graphs, entry points, change hotspots, conventions, transcript events, quiz progress, certification status, and issue candidates in real time. The project is repo-agnostic. Bob supplies the active repository per session, so OnboardOps can onboard contributors onto many different GitHub projects without hardcoding a target repo. The result is a repeatable “first contribution” workflow powered by IBM Bob: run /onboard, learn the architecture, prove understanding, and leave with a concrete next task.