Plain-English program docs
Purpose, processing flow, inputs and outputs for every program — written for developers who have never read COBOL, grounded in parser-verified facts, never free-floating AI prose.
Documentation for undocumented mainframes
MainframeLore ingests a source export of your COBOL, copybooks and JCL and produces plain-English documentation, flowcharts, dependency maps and a Q&A assistant — without ever connecting to your mainframe.
000410 PERFORM 1000-DALYTRAN-GET-NEXT
000411 UNTIL END-OF-DAILY-TRANS-FILE = 'Y'
000420 PERFORM 1500-VALIDATE-TRAN
000430 IF WS-VALIDATION-FAIL-REASON = 0
000440 PERFORM 2000-POST-TRANSACTION
000450 ELSE
000460 PERFORM 2500-WRITE-REJECT-REC
000470 END-IF
000480 END-PERFORM.
Grounded in parsed facts · [CBTRN02C/2000-POST-TRANSACTION @ cbl/CBTRN02C.cbl:210]
One upload, four artifacts
Purpose, processing flow, inputs and outputs for every program — written for developers who have never read COBOL, grounded in parser-verified facts, never free-floating AI prose.
Control flow for every program and every JCL job — which steps run, which datasets flow in and out, what happens on a failed condition code.
Program ↔ copybook ↔ job ↔ dataset in one graph. Ask "what breaks if we change this copybook?" and get the fourteen programs that copy it.
"Where is interest calculated?" → CBACT04C/1300-COMPUTE-INTEREST @ line 462. Every answer cites program, paragraph and line.
How it works
A zip of PDS members — COBOL, copybooks, JCL, procs. The same export you already make for source control or vendor audits.
A structural parser extracts programs, paragraphs, copybooks, CALLs, datasets and DB2 tables first. AI writes the prose on top of verified facts — not the other way around.
A static documentation site plus Markdown and PDF. Host it on your intranet forever. No portal, no seats, no lock-in.
Why not IBM?
| watsonx Code Assistant / ADDI | MainframeLore | |
|---|---|---|
| Mainframe access | Deep system integration, agents, months of setup | None. Source export only. |
| Time to first result | A procurement cycle | Hours after upload |
| Where output lives | Inside IBM tooling | Static HTML / Markdown / PDF you keep |
| Priced for | Global banks with IBM enterprise agreements | Mid-tier banks, insurers, agencies, consultancies |
Security
There is nothing to install on z/OS and no network path to your systems. The tool reads a source export — the same artifact your auditors already handle.
Pricing
Free, no commitment: pick any COBOL program from your estate and we'll return the generated docs, flowchart and dependency view so your team can judge the quality on your own code. Or browse the full documentation we generated for AWS's CardDemo first.
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