Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL(hypercubic.ai)
hypercubic.ai
Show HN: Agentic interface for mainframes and COBOL
https://www.hypercubic.ai/hopper
59 comments
What was the training data? While there are open source projects for mainframes, most high-quality and battle-tested COBOL code bases are likely proprietary.
Also, will it be trained on the code base it sees? Most companies would be opposed to sharing their IP.
Edit: according to the website, the model won't be trained with your data.
Also, will it be trained on the code base it sees? Most companies would be opposed to sharing their IP.
Edit: according to the website, the model won't be trained with your data.
Is this available to install on Hercules emulator for hobbyists?
For people unfamiliar with Mainframes, check out the moshix youtube channel.
We don't currently support Hercules, but we are providing free access to a mainframe for people to try out.
That's great! Thank you
US banks and creditors desperately need this yesterday.
That’s what we’ve seen with our customers. Some have only one or two COBOL developers left in some teams, and they are often the only people with the operational knowledge needed to keep these systems running.
They are either past retirement or about to retire in the coming years.
They are either past retirement or about to retire in the coming years.
Oh, great. Nobody left who knows the language + vibe coding + banking and financial transactions. What could possibly go wrong...? Good luck!
and now they moved to microservices chaos and need it more than ever.
> Mainframes still run a surprising amount of critical infrastructure: banking, payments, insurance, airlines, government programs, logistics, and core operations at large institutions. Many of these systems are decades old, but they continue to process enormous transaction volumes because they are reliable, secure, and deeply embedded into business operations.
It saddens me when companies abandon them, it takes so much effort to replicate their power. I often wonder why mainframes never had a more modern easier to maintain and manage programming language designed for them.
It saddens me when companies abandon them, it takes so much effort to replicate their power. I often wonder why mainframes never had a more modern easier to maintain and manage programming language designed for them.
> I often wonder why mainframes never had a more modern easier to maintain and manage programming language designed for them.
Although COBOL is one of the primary programming languages for the mainframe, it can also run Java and Python as the others have mentioned. COBOL itself isn't particularly difficult to grasp for modern engineers, it's readable and has an easy to understand English-like syntax.
The challenge here is learning and becoming proficient in the end to end mainframe ecosystem including the intricacies of z/OS. It's a completely closed off ecosystem and is not as accessible to play around with for the average SWE as compared to windows or linux based development.
Although COBOL is one of the primary programming languages for the mainframe, it can also run Java and Python as the others have mentioned. COBOL itself isn't particularly difficult to grasp for modern engineers, it's readable and has an easy to understand English-like syntax.
The challenge here is learning and becoming proficient in the end to end mainframe ecosystem including the intricacies of z/OS. It's a completely closed off ecosystem and is not as accessible to play around with for the average SWE as compared to windows or linux based development.
You can run kubernetes on mainframes. They’re not as old/out of touch that most people think
Can you provide more info / examples on that?
Think of them as say, your AWS. Except that you can just start randomly replacing hardware without the software skipping a beat. That’s the level of redundancy and stability these things offer.
I didn’t know this either until I started just researching a while back. It’s amazing. They get a bad rep, but they are very very awesome and modern.
I didn’t know this either until I started just researching a while back. It’s amazing. They get a bad rep, but they are very very awesome and modern.
Here's a new hot topic from IBM in 2024:
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos-hot-topics?topic=new-kuberne...
As a rule of thumb, if there's something in computing you've heard about, expect IBM to also have heard about it and made something like it for their machines. Sometimes they lag a bit but eventually they converge towards having their own of all things computational.
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos-hot-topics?topic=new-kuberne...
As a rule of thumb, if there's something in computing you've heard about, expect IBM to also have heard about it and made something like it for their machines. Sometimes they lag a bit but eventually they converge towards having their own of all things computational.
Java is available on z/OS.
And Python: https://www.ibm.com/products/open-enterprise-python-zos
And node.js: https://www.ibm.com/products/sdk-nodejs-compiler-zos
And Go: https://www.ibm.com/products/open-enterprise-sdk-go-zos
IBM z/OS essentially contains three separate environments: (a) environment for running traditional mainframe applications (JCL, VSAM, ISPF, TSO/E, CICS, IMS, DB2, COBOL, PL/I, etc); (b) UNIX-based environment (supports Java, Python, node.js, Go, Kubernetes)–it officially conforms to the UNIX standard, so almost any POSIX app can be ported to it–but sometimes with some difficulty, since it is a bit of a weird UNIX implementation (e.g. by default uses EBCDIC instead of ASCII–although the filesystem has built-in support for translating between ASCII and EBCDIC and Unicode); (c) Linux container environment (zCX), which can run any Linux Docker container, provided it is compiled for the mainframe CPU architecture (z/Architecture aka s390x)
It is quite common for people to take an existing application written using (a) and add new components to it using (b) and (c). Indeed, IBM themselves tends to rely on (b) a lot in adding new OS features.
I think the biggest downside of IBM mainframes, is everything associated with them is super-expensive – the hardware, the software licensing, etc. IBM charges ISVs thousands of dollars a year just to get access to a legal development environment. (Hobbyists often use pirated versions of the software, but not a good idea if you are trying to run a business, and IBM keeps on trying to make that harder–most recently they've announced they are going to stop licensing on-premise emulated development environments and force them all to move to the cloud.)
And node.js: https://www.ibm.com/products/sdk-nodejs-compiler-zos
And Go: https://www.ibm.com/products/open-enterprise-sdk-go-zos
IBM z/OS essentially contains three separate environments: (a) environment for running traditional mainframe applications (JCL, VSAM, ISPF, TSO/E, CICS, IMS, DB2, COBOL, PL/I, etc); (b) UNIX-based environment (supports Java, Python, node.js, Go, Kubernetes)–it officially conforms to the UNIX standard, so almost any POSIX app can be ported to it–but sometimes with some difficulty, since it is a bit of a weird UNIX implementation (e.g. by default uses EBCDIC instead of ASCII–although the filesystem has built-in support for translating between ASCII and EBCDIC and Unicode); (c) Linux container environment (zCX), which can run any Linux Docker container, provided it is compiled for the mainframe CPU architecture (z/Architecture aka s390x)
It is quite common for people to take an existing application written using (a) and add new components to it using (b) and (c). Indeed, IBM themselves tends to rely on (b) a lot in adding new OS features.
I think the biggest downside of IBM mainframes, is everything associated with them is super-expensive – the hardware, the software licensing, etc. IBM charges ISVs thousands of dollars a year just to get access to a legal development environment. (Hobbyists often use pirated versions of the software, but not a good idea if you are trying to run a business, and IBM keeps on trying to make that harder–most recently they've announced they are going to stop licensing on-premise emulated development environments and force them all to move to the cloud.)
Hopefully Llm while it may not allow immediately for like 100% ready to go financial services code
Maybe it gives us good tests ?
That alone for something on cobol might be worthwhile
Maybe it gives us good tests ?
That alone for something on cobol might be worthwhile
This is a great concept and good usecase, all these old dudes working on COBOL , mainframe can finally use AI stuff for real.
Can I usw this to learn iBM Mainframes development and administration? IBM is gatekeeping this knowledge hard.
Great approach. Honestly the hard part probably isn’t COBOL itself, it’s all the weird operational glue around it.
Built by leading minds behind the world's most advanced AI and technology - Our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions [...]
https://www.hypercubic.ai/company
Please consider adding more background of the executive and heads of department on the about page to help us understand who these top researchers, engineers, and strategists are.
There are currently no names on the about page, not even the co-founders, however this claim that "our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions" appears on multiple pages on the website.
It seems:
* Sai was an Apple machine learning engineer for 19 months, then a Apple lead machine learning engineer for 17 months.
* Aayush was an Apple software engineer for 3 years, then an Apple senior software engineer for 8 months at Apple.
https://www.hypercubic.ai/company
Please consider adding more background of the executive and heads of department on the about page to help us understand who these top researchers, engineers, and strategists are.
There are currently no names on the about page, not even the co-founders, however this claim that "our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions" appears on multiple pages on the website.
It seems:
* Sai was an Apple machine learning engineer for 19 months, then a Apple lead machine learning engineer for 17 months.
* Aayush was an Apple software engineer for 3 years, then an Apple senior software engineer for 8 months at Apple.
Hi! I agree we should have a profile page on website.
Btw, this is Aayush and I was at Apple for almost four years and Sai was there for three. And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has almost a decade of experience and has worked at Cognition and Windsurf.
Btw, this is Aayush and I was at Apple for almost four years and Sai was there for three. And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has almost a decade of experience and has worked at Cognition and Windsurf.
> And we have Kevin as our founding engineer who has [...] worked at Cognition and Windsurf.
Kevin was at Cognition as a software engineer for 9 months and Windsurf as a design engineer for 7 months.
Including company logos on the Hypercubic website because team members worked there for less then a year doesn't convey the endorsement of these companies I'd expect when I see their logo being used.
Kevin was at Cognition as a software engineer for 9 months and Windsurf as a design engineer for 7 months.
Including company logos on the Hypercubic website because team members worked there for less then a year doesn't convey the endorsement of these companies I'd expect when I see their logo being used.
I came here to agree with this. You don't put IBM's logo on your page just because one of your team used to work there.
That gives off a bad signal to someone visiting your site.
Everyone's faking it till they make it but at the same time using a logo like that, which universally implies that you have some kind of relationship with that company or they are using your product, is not even faking it.
And that's ignoring the legal challenges you are up for if that company spots you doing it.
BTW this sounds like a genius offering
That gives off a bad signal to someone visiting your site.
Everyone's faking it till they make it but at the same time using a logo like that, which universally implies that you have some kind of relationship with that company or they are using your product, is not even faking it.
And that's ignoring the legal challenges you are up for if that company spots you doing it.
BTW this sounds like a genius offering
I was concerned when I read this, and was going to suggest that they consider changing it. But I just looked at the page and it seems clear in context. That section of the page is describing their team, and the text is talking about where they've worked previously. It's true that the logos imply some relationship, but in this case the relationship being implied is that of former employer.
Had the logos been on their frontpage with no explanation, the implication would be that these companies are customers, but there's no such implication here.
(Btw, I appreciate that you're saying this from a place of actually liking the product, or at least the idea, - I think it's often true that criticisms are coming from a place of wanting to like something, but commenters usually don't make this bit explicit and then the criticism just sounds like harshness for its own sake.)
Had the logos been on their frontpage with no explanation, the implication would be that these companies are customers, but there's no such implication here.
(Btw, I appreciate that you're saying this from a place of actually liking the product, or at least the idea, - I think it's often true that criticisms are coming from a place of wanting to like something, but commenters usually don't make this bit explicit and then the criticism just sounds like harshness for its own sake.)
I went back and looked again and while I have moved a little more to your position, I still believe it is misleading. The key text to me is "Our team unites top researchers, engineers, and strategists from pioneering companies and institutions—all focused on building systems that deliver real impact." Under that are the logos. To me, that implies that engineers who are actively employed by those companies are somehow working on this, the assumption being that those employers have blessed it.
I'll admit it's not clear cut - but I feel it deliberately pushes the boundaries, as marketing often does.
But as far as the idea goes, it sounds like a fantastic direction. That should have been my primary message.
I'll admit it's not clear cut - but I feel it deliberately pushes the boundaries, as marketing often does.
But as far as the idea goes, it sounds like a fantastic direction. That should have been my primary message.
Like 90% if not 99% of HN users, I don't like marketing speak either - and am constantly advising founders to prune it from any text they post to HN. But on an "about us" company page? That's a different universe. If you hold that kind of corpspeak against a company on its own website, then your problem is with corporate marketing itself, or nearly all of it. That's also a position many of us sympathize with, but it's unfair to hold it against a specific startup.
> it seems clear in context
While I get marketing and faking it until you make it, I'm struggling to be comfortable with the idea that being with a company for seven/nine months and not holding something above a regular developer role (lead/senior/staff) qualifies you as being a "leading mind" or a "top engineer" from the company logos shown.
I'm not trying to be "harsh for its own sake", I've already been HN rate limited and have no desire to make that worse, so I wasn't sure if I should risk a reply, given this thread has also been manually down-weighted (I appreciate that you commented so we get more context), but I see another reply to your comment so safety in numbers.
I'm sure they're all leading minds and top engineers but I question if that applies in the context of those specific companies they're claiming.
I like the idea of the product, especially that their agents validate transformations against original system via mathematical techniques. It's my flaw that the thing that attracts me to the correctness of their agents also extends to wanting to see slightly clearer credentials of the team involved.
While I get marketing and faking it until you make it, I'm struggling to be comfortable with the idea that being with a company for seven/nine months and not holding something above a regular developer role (lead/senior/staff) qualifies you as being a "leading mind" or a "top engineer" from the company logos shown.
I'm not trying to be "harsh for its own sake", I've already been HN rate limited and have no desire to make that worse, so I wasn't sure if I should risk a reply, given this thread has also been manually down-weighted (I appreciate that you commented so we get more context), but I see another reply to your comment so safety in numbers.
I'm sure they're all leading minds and top engineers but I question if that applies in the context of those specific companies they're claiming.
I like the idea of the product, especially that their agents validate transformations against original system via mathematical techniques. It's my flaw that the thing that attracts me to the correctness of their agents also extends to wanting to see slightly clearer credentials of the team involved.
> I've already been HN rate limited and have no desire to make that worse, so I wasn't sure if I should risk a reply
Your account isn't rate limited. Are you talking about a different account? if not, what made you think it was?
Your account isn't rate limited. Are you talking about a different account? if not, what made you think it was?
It was this account, I only have the one. I got the "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." error last month when I hadn't made any more then a few replies, and not in quick succession.
I got the error after writing out a detailed reply (which I lost as a result since the error is on posting not loading the form) so I couldn't have been fast enough to trigger a regular rate limit.
I thought it was unusual so I searched and found your explanation for this error message https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157524
I assumed since I've had two warnings, a rate limit was applied.
Although given Anthropic have since removed the word "understands" from their page, I feel I was vindicated of flamebaiting. [1]
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722979
I got the error after writing out a detailed reply (which I lost as a result since the error is on posting not loading the form) so I couldn't have been fast enough to trigger a regular rate limit.
I thought it was unusual so I searched and found your explanation for this error message https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157524
I assumed since I've had two warnings, a rate limit was applied.
Although given Anthropic have since removed the word "understands" from their page, I feel I was vindicated of flamebaiting. [1]
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722979
I run into that all the time during periods of more intense posting, I just hit the back button or Shift-H for the same from Vimium to get back to the form with my text in it, and if I really want to post it I send it the next session I'm around.
Wait until Elon sees one of their products is called HyperLoop
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According to our software (which is, of course, imperfect), your account has repeatedly been posting AI-generated and/or AI-edited comments. If so, can you please not do that? It's not allowed here, and will eventually get your account banned.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079.
Instead, write any text that you post to HN by hand. We want to hear you in your own voice: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
(This is not a ding against LLMs - they're incredible tools and we use them heavily ourselves. Just not to replace human-to-human conversation.)
See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079.
Instead, write any text that you post to HN by hand. We want to hear you in your own voice: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
(This is not a ding against LLMs - they're incredible tools and we use them heavily ourselves. Just not to replace human-to-human conversation.)
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So letting an LLM loose on a mainframe is like letting a fox into a henhouse. :)
The problem here is that people who understand these systems are all retiring. Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them.
So the real challenge companies are facing is will there be enough people to safely maintain these systems in the next decade. If they do not, it means failures in credit card systems, airline reservations, insurance claims and more.
So the real challenge companies are facing is will there be enough people to safely maintain these systems in the next decade. If they do not, it means failures in credit card systems, airline reservations, insurance claims and more.
It sounds like they will still need to hire and train human talent who can understand the code, and evaluate and integrate outputs of AI systems that conform to the specific compliance and data retention requirements of these industries. And also people who can enforce said compliance, and a lot of other things. Sounds like a complex problem without a neat off-the-shelf solution
True story. I used to work for a company that developed both mainframe software as well as “enterprise” software (based on Unix systems). The two sides of the house were pretty separate. While I was on the enterprise side, through a fluke of geography, I worked in the building with many of the mainframe folks. In a normal office, you might have emails go out about events like employee birthdays, marriages, and kids being born. In the mainframe office there were emails that went out about employee deaths. Several of the employees had walkers.
The age of mainframe folks is highly bi-modal. The original folks are dying of old age. There is a new crop of 35-and-under folks that have sprung up as they noticed that the work is very steady and the pay is good. Between ages 35 and 65, there aren’t many mainframe people.
The age of mainframe folks is highly bi-modal. The original folks are dying of old age. There is a new crop of 35-and-under folks that have sprung up as they noticed that the work is very steady and the pay is good. Between ages 35 and 65, there aren’t many mainframe people.
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Correct, they are retiring, for sure.
The last thing I’d ever put into mission-critical systems is an LLM.
So let’s hope it’s a mainframe sandbox so future COBOL programmers can learn on it. :)
In any case, COBOL systems work precisely because no one is constantly tinkering with them to “add a new framework”.
The last time I saw, someone made a “Hello World” app in Electron, and it was 220 MB.
Howgh.
The last thing I’d ever put into mission-critical systems is an LLM.
So let’s hope it’s a mainframe sandbox so future COBOL programmers can learn on it. :)
In any case, COBOL systems work precisely because no one is constantly tinkering with them to “add a new framework”.
The last time I saw, someone made a “Hello World” app in Electron, and it was 220 MB.
Howgh.
Wouldn't the lack of supply drive up wages until more new talent is incentivized?
That is the current landscape today. Mainframe engineers are in high demand and good ones are paid quite well.
I've heard from a global bank, they have one mainframe developer in the team who is past 70. She manages a critical credit card service and gets paid in the upper end of 6 figures to work 20 hrs a week. She's the only one who knows that system. Lots of stories like this.
I've heard from a global bank, they have one mainframe developer in the team who is past 70. She manages a critical credit card service and gets paid in the upper end of 6 figures to work 20 hrs a week. She's the only one who knows that system. Lots of stories like this.
Would she consider taking on someone interested in learning COBOL to support her and the team?
Maybe they should pay her to mentor someone lmao
> Majority of the devs are over 60 and there's simply not enough new talent coming in to replace them.
Yawn this tired old yarn, again. Mainframe development was offshored from the US decades ago. These retiring cobol programmers simply don’t exist in numbers that matter. The market could be to the companies doing the offshore work, but they’ve been throwing bodies at this problem for a long time, maybe there’s a market there maybe not.
Yawn this tired old yarn, again. Mainframe development was offshored from the US decades ago. These retiring cobol programmers simply don’t exist in numbers that matter. The market could be to the companies doing the offshore work, but they’ve been throwing bodies at this problem for a long time, maybe there’s a market there maybe not.
Throwing bodies has been the primary way to approach mainframe modernization and a majority of them do end up failing (https://softwaremodernizationservices.com/insights/mainframe...).
Now bringing in AI agents that are incredibly good at software engineering into the modernization lifecycle can completely change the landscape. That's the vision we're building towards at Hypercubic.
Previously you might need 50 engineers and 5+ years to modernize a mainframe application, now with Hypercubic, we can compress that down to 1/5th of those estimates.
Now bringing in AI agents that are incredibly good at software engineering into the modernization lifecycle can completely change the landscape. That's the vision we're building towards at Hypercubic.
Previously you might need 50 engineers and 5+ years to modernize a mainframe application, now with Hypercubic, we can compress that down to 1/5th of those estimates.
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You can download it here: https://www.hypercubic.ai/hopper, and you can also request access and immediately get a mainframe user account to play with.
There's also a video runthrough at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q81L5DcfBvE.
Mainframes still run a surprising amount of critical infrastructure: banking, payments, insurance, airlines, government programs, logistics, and core operations at large institutions. Many of these systems are decades old, but they continue to process enormous transaction volumes because they are reliable, secure, and deeply embedded into business operations.
A lot of that software is written in COBOL and runs on IBM z/OS. The development environment looks very different from modern cloud or Unix-style development. Instead of GitHub, shell commands, package managers, and CI pipelines, developers often work through TN3270 terminal sessions, ISPF panels, partitioned datasets, JCL, JES queues, spool output, return codes, VSAM files, CICS transactions, and shop-specific conventions.
TN3270 is the terminal interface used to interact with many IBM mainframe systems. ISPF is the menu and panel system developers use inside that terminal to browse datasets, edit source, submit jobs, and inspect output. It is powerful and reliable, but it was designed for expert humans navigating screens, function keys, and fixed-width workflows, not AI agents.
A simple COBOL change might require finding the right source member, checking copybooks, locating compile JCL, submitting a job, reading JES/SYSPRINT output, interpreting condition codes, patching fixed-width source, and resubmitting.
Much of this work is so well-defined and repetitive that it's a good fit for agentic AI. To get that working, however, a chatbot next to a terminal is not enough. The agent needs to operate inside the mainframe environment.
Hopper combines three things: (1) A real TN3270 terminal, (2) Mainframe-aware panels for datasets, members, jobs, and spool output, and (3) An AI agent that can operate across those z/OS surfaces.
For example, here is a tiny version of the kind of thing Hopper can help debug:
A human would submit this job, inspect JES output, open `SYSPRINT`, find the undefined `CUSTOMER-BALNCE`, map it back to the source, patch the member, and resubmit. Hopper is designed to let an agent operate through that same loop autonomously.
Hopper is not trying to hide the mainframe behind a generic abstraction, and it's not a chatbot. The design principle is simple: preserve the fidelity of the mainframe environment, but make it accessible to AI agents.
Sensitive operations require approval, and the terminal remains visible at all times.
Once agents can operate inside the mainframe environment, new workflows become possible: faster job debugging, automated documentation, safer code changes, test generation, migration planning, traffic replay, and modernization verification.
We’re curious to hear your thoughts! especially from anyone who has worked with mainframes, COBOL or has done legacy enterprise modernization.