Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed with IBM watsonx Code Assistant is now generally available (GA). Announced as Technical Preview during AnsibleFest earlier this year, Ansible Lightspeed with IBM watsonx Code Assistant brings many powerful features that make it easier to adopt, create, and maintain automation practices.
This article gives an overview of features in the GA release:
- Ansible-specific watsonx Granite model
- Multi-task generation
- Post-processing rules
- Ansible code bot
- Single sign-on (SSO) and user management
1. Ansible-specific watsonx Granite model
The IBM base code model used in watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed is purpose-built to accelerate Ansible development.
watsonx Code Assistant uses the model's generative AI capabilities to provide natural language descriptions of Ansible tasks and receive Ansible YAML task recommendations that match the descriptions provided. The generative AI capability of watsonx Code Assistant uses a combination of natural language (English) and code (Ansible YAML) data as training data.
2. Multi-task generation
You can now generate multiple Ansible task suggestions for Ansible task files and playbooks by providing a sequential chain of natural language task prompts chained together using ampersands (&) in YAML comment (#) lines.
3. Post-processing rules
Post-processing capabilities help augment IBM watsonx Code Assistant model recommendations with Ansible best practices.
4. Ansible code bot
The Ansible code bot integrates natively into Git repositories you select. It then scans existing Ansible content (roles, playbooks, etc.), and automatically submits pull requests when it finds automation content that could be qualitatively improved with best practices. These pull requests contain code improvement recommendations for you to review, test, and apply. The current release employs ansible-lint to recommend code quality improvements; future releases will expand this with more AI capabilities.
5. Single sign-on (SSO) and user management
You can activate Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed using Red Hat Customer Portal credentials. Commercial users can manage access to the paid service using Red Hat Customer Portal user management features.
Next steps
Visit the Ansible Lightspeed with IBM watsonx Code Assistant product page to explore more information and try out an interactive hands-on lab to explore how AI can assist with automation.
