COBOL-GHOUL: The Local Séance Chatbot Channeling Dead Code

A developer built COBOL-GHOUL, an offline terminal chatbot that role-plays as the "spirits" of dead programming languages such as COBOL, ALGOL 60 and Fortran. The agent runs Google's open-weight Gemma 2 9B locally through Ollama and uses the Mastra agent framework to manage conversational state, inject context and execute a local tool that scans workspaces for deprecated file extensions and legacy syntax. The project was submitted to the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4.

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine What I Built I built COBOL-GHOUL, an offline terminal séance chatbot that channels the spirits of long-dead and forgotten programming languages. In honor of Halloween and Día de los Muertos, this project acts as a digital medium, letting developers conduct a local séance on their machines to speak directly with the ancestral "ghosts" of software history—specifically targeting the ancient spirits of COBOL, ALGOL 60, and Fortran. When you boot it up, the terminal interface darkens, and the AI agent speaks entirely in character. It uses cryptic mid-century computing jargon mixed with eerie, spectral commentary about modern software complexities like JavaScript fatigue and ephemeral cloud architectures. Demo You can view the live terminal session recording and interaction logs on my GitHub repository linked below, or watch the quick terminal cast here: Link to your Asciinema, YouTube, or Loom demo video Code bash git clone https://github.com https://github.com Use code with caution. You can inspect the full open-source codebase, system prompts, and custom tools directly in my repository: { github github.com } How I Built It COBOL-GHOUL runs entirely locally with zero external network dependencies, ensuring the dead stay safely contained on your own machine. • The Brain: I used Gemma 2 9B , Google's open-weight model, served locally via Ollama. It was configured with a specific system prompt to anchor its historical memory and alter its "ectoplasm levels" based on text temperature. • The Orchestrator: I built the core agent architecture using Mastra, an open-source agent framework, to seamlessly manage the conversational state loop, inject context libraries, and handle dynamic tool execution. • The Medium's Tools: The agent utilizes a local directory parsing tool that scans the user's workspace for deprecated file extensions or legacy code syntax to "feed" the spirit and influence its personality. Why Does Open Innovation Matter? Open innovation was crucial to making this project a reality: My Agent Session I saved my development and testing session using DevRelay. You can see how the agent iteratively learned to refine its spectral personas and execute local tools here: Link to your DevRelay Agent Session The Spirit of It The moment this project truly landed was when I fed it an actual snippet of 1960s COBOL code from an old banking ledger. The terminal paused, printed a simulated "cold chill" sequence, and generated this response: "I remember the magnetic drums... the shifting punch cards... why have you awoken me to a world where lines of code are written to be discarded in weeks? We built to outlive the century." It genuinely gave me chills and made me appreciate the sheer engineering resilience of the programmers who came before us. Prize Categories I am entering COBOL-GHOUL into the following partner categories: • Best Use of Gemma: Built entirely around Google's Gemma 2 open-weight model running locally. • Best Use of Mastra: Used Mastra's open-source agent framework to orchestrate tools, system memory, and the local conversational loop.