Getting started with watsonx Code Assistant

IBM® watsonx™ Code Assistant is a portfolio of purpose-built, generative AI-assisted products that are built to accelerate code and content generation and increase developer productivity, with trust, security, and compliance at its core. It provides pre-trained models based on specific programming languages to provide trust and efficiency for accurate code and content generation.

Your cloud administrator must set up a watsonx Code Assistant instance in IBM Cloud® and you must install and configure the Visual Studio Code extension for your use case.

Before you begin

Make sure you have an IBM Cloud account.
Provision an instance of watsonx Code Assistant through the IBM Cloud catalog or by working with an IBM sales representative. Your cloud administrator can provision an instance for your company.
Not all features apply to every pricing plan. For more information about your pricing plan, see the IBM watsonx Code Assistant catalog page.

Set up watsonx Code Assistant in IBM Cloud

Your cloud administrator completes the onboarding checklist for your use case to set up an instance of the watsonx Code Assistant service in IBM Cloud. The onboarding checklist simplifies the following setup tasks:

Create a service ID and API key.
Set up a Db2 database to store code input and output. (watsonx Code Assistant for Z only)
Create the serving environment.
Add authorized users to the IBM watsonx Code Assistant instance. (watsonx Code Assistant for Z only)

For more information, see the cloud setup documentation for your use case:

Install the Visual Studio Code extension for your use case

Depending on your use case, watsonx Code Assistant provides code suggestions in a Visual Studio Code extension.

Watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed works with the Ansible extension for Visual Studio Code. Your cloud administrator must provide a Model ID and API Key in the Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed Admin Portal. For more information, see Setting up watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed in IBM Cloud.
IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Z works with the IBM Z Open Editor extension{: external}.

Provide the IBM watsonx Code Assistant resources for your use case

watsonx Code Assistant for Z

If you are using watsonx Code Assistant for Z, you must create an API key and provide it in the settings for your IBM Z Open Editor extension for Visual Studio Code.

When your cloud administrator adds you to the watsonx Code Assistant instance, you receive an invitation to create or log in.
After you log in to your account, create an API key and store it in a safe location.
Provide this API key in the settings for your IBM Z Open Editor extension for Visual Studio Code to enable code recommendations.

For more information, see Setting up watsonx Code Assistant for Z in IBM Cloud.

Next steps

To start coding, see the documentation for your use case:

watsonx Code Assistant for Z Refactoring and transforming COBOL code

watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed Writing Ansible playbooks with AI-generated recommendations