MainframeLore — plain-English documentation for your mainframe estate

CBTRN02C.CBL · as exportedfixed format · col 7–72

----+----1----+----2----+----3----+----4----+----5

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.

Generated documentationlive

CBTRN02C — Daily transaction posting

Grounded in parsed facts · [CBTRN02C/2000-POST-TRANSACTION @ cbl/CBTRN02C.cbl:210]

One upload, four artifacts

Everything a new engineer needs on day one

AUTO-DOCS

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.

FLOWCHARTS

Paragraph & job flowcharts

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.

DEPENDENCY MAP

Estate-wide impact analysis

Program ↔ copybook ↔ job ↔ dataset in one graph. Ask "what breaks if we change this copybook?" and get the fourteen programs that copy it.

Q&A

Ask questions, get citations

"Where is interest calculated?" → CBACT04C/1300-COMPUTE-INTEREST @ line 462. Every answer cites program, paragraph and line.

Try it live on CardDemo →

How it works

Source export in. Documentation out. Nothing touches your mainframe.

STEP 1

Export your source

A zip of PDS members — COBOL, copybooks, JCL, procs. The same export you already make for source control or vendor audits.

STEP 2

We parse, then explain

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.

STEP 3

You own the output

A static documentation site plus Markdown and PDF. Host it on your intranet forever. No portal, no seats, no lock-in.

Static site, optional live layer. The documentation itself is static — no server, no dependency on us, host it anywhere including your own intranet. The Q&A assistant is a separate, optional service that searches the indexed source and asks an LLM to answer with citations, and it can deploy inside your network so your source code never has to leave it.

Why not IBM?

Built for the shops enterprise tooling skips

	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
Built for	Global banks with IBM enterprise agreements	Mid-tier banks, insurers, agencies, consultancies

Security

Designed for people whose job is to say no

No connection, no agents, no credentials

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.

On-prem / container deployment: source never leaves your network
Bring your own LLM key — or run analysis-only with no AI calls at all
Deterministic parser output; AI prose is always labeled and citation-grounded
Uploads deleted after processing on the hosted tier

Full security & deployment details, FAQ →

Get in touch

Send us one program. We'll send back its documentation.

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.

Prefer email? Write directly to vaseemakrams55@gmail.com