GitLab Launches GitLab Orbit for AI Efficiency

GitLab Inc., a prominent player in the DevSecOps orchestration space, has announced the general availability of its new product, GitLab Orbit. This innovative context graph is designed to enhance the software lifecycle by integrating various components such as code, merge requests, work items, pipelines, and vulnerabilities into a single, continuously updated view. The primary aim of GitLab Orbit is to boost the performance of AI agents and engineers by providing them with comprehensive context, thereby improving task accuracy and efficiency.

In the realm of software development, AI agents often face challenges when accessing complete information within large codebases. This can lead to multiple iterations and increased operational costs. GitLab Orbit addresses these issues by offering a holistic view of the software lifecycle, enabling AI agents to perform tasks with greater precision and fewer attempts. This not only reduces the cost per task but also makes AI spending more predictable as organizations scale their operations.

During GitLab’s internal testing, AI agents equipped with GitLab Orbit demonstrated remarkable improvements. They completed tasks with up to 45 times fewer hallucinations, meaning they made significantly fewer errors or incorrect assumptions, and used up to 4.5 times fewer tokens, which are units of computational effort. This improvement allows engineering teams to answer complex queries more efficiently, such as determining the impact of proposed changes or identifying which production systems are affected by specific vulnerabilities. The system leverages existing data within GitLab, eliminating the need for additional integrations, and it updates automatically as new code is deployed, adhering to the access permissions already established by organizations.

GitLab Orbit is designed to work seamlessly with the GitLab Duo Agent Platform and supports various third-party agents, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode. This compatibility is achieved through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) or the GitLab Command Line Interface (CLI). Since its introduction, over 3,500 organizations have adopted GitLab Orbit, with their coding agents executing more than 280,000 queries. This widespread adoption underscores the product’s effectiveness and the demand for such a comprehensive context solution in the industry.

GitLab offers Orbit in query packs that are shared across all users and AI agents within an organization. These packs are tailored to meet the specific needs of each organization, ensuring that they receive the most value from their investment. GitLab Orbit is now available for Premium and Ultimate customers, initially on GitLab.com, and will be rolled out to Self-Managed and GitLab Dedicated platforms in the coming weeks. Organizations interested in exploring GitLab Orbit can request a complimentary 30-day trial through their GitLab account team, providing them with an opportunity to experience the benefits firsthand.

Ryan Harvey, the head of AI engineering at Compare the Market, highlighted the advantages of GitLab Orbit, stating, “What GitLab Orbit gave us was something we’d been chasing for a while: the knowledge graph that backs an AI code reviewer that actually understands our codebase, not just the diff in front of it.” He noted that in tests, GitLab Orbit outperformed other approaches, including retrieval-augmented generation, in providing better comment placement and summaries.

Arnal Dayaratna, research vice president at IDC, emphasized the importance of context in AI operations, noting that GitLab’s comprehensive data capture across the software lifecycle positions it well to offer a complete view of software development and delivery. This capability can help organizations improve outcomes and manage AI costs more effectively.

Manav Khurana, GitLab’s chief product and marketing officer, remarked, “GitLab Orbit helps organizations get more value from their AI investments. AI agents are only as accurate and efficient as the context they work from. Orbit gives every agent in the governed software factory the full record of how an organization builds and ships software, so teams make decisions they can trust, keep spend predictable, and answer questions they never could before.”

GitLab is widely recognized as an intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, helping organizations boost developer productivity, enhance operational efficiency, and mitigate security and compliance risks. Trusted by over 70 million users and nearly half of the Fortune 100, GitLab accelerates digital transformation by enabling the rapid delivery of secure software.

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