GitLab 19.5 release notes

On October 15, 2026, GitLab 19.5 was released with the following features.

Dhairya contributed to offline transfer and Organizations support for import, so that groups, projects, and their memberships can move between GitLab instances.

Primary features

GitLab MCP server is generally available

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

In previous versions of GitLab, MCP clients could reach only a limited set of GitLab tools. Now the GitLab MCP server is generally available.

With the MCP server, any MCP-compatible agent, such as Claude Code or Cursor, gets direct access to the expanded GitLab catalog of tools and GitLab Duo Agent Platform agents and flows. Your agents can work across more of your GitLab workflow and run Agent Platform agents and flows without leaving your preferred tool.

GitLab Secrets Manager is generally available

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed
Add-ons: GitLab Secrets Manager
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

Without a centralized secrets store, credentials can become scattered across over-scoped CI/CD variables, local config files, and standalone vaults. This makes them harder to manage, protect, and audit.

GitLab Secrets Manager is now generally available on GitLab.com and GitLab Self-Managed. Built on OpenBao, it uses your existing group and project permissions, so there’s no separate access model to maintain. Each CI secret is scoped to the job that needs it, based on environment, branch, and branch protection rules. Audit logs are generated for every create, read, update, and delete.

GitLab Secrets Manager consumes GitLab Credits. Start a free 30-day trial or enable it for your group or instance.

Connect Externally Connected Agents (ECAs) to AI Governance

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

Previously, the AI Governance Dashboard showed activity only from GitLab Duo Agent Platform agents. This provided you total visibility into all of your Agent Platform agents, including the sessions they were running, including tool calls, MCPs used, and the prompt input and output from the user and agent respectively.

With the GitLab 19.5 release, after a one-time glab govern setup, you can now extend governance visibility past just GitLab Duo Agent Platform agents, and connect Externally Connected Agents (ECAs) like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex to GitLab AI Governance by using the GitLab CLI (glab).

When Allow external agents and Store AI audit events are enabled, security and compliance teams get visibility into ECAs that run outside GitLab, alongside your GitLab Duo Agent Platform agents. Every qualifying agent session is captured, including who ran it, which agent, which project, and when, with sessions and tool calls appearing in the AI Governance Dashboard and the AI audit events report. Audit events also flow to your SIEM through audit event streaming.

Tool output is not sent, except for short error messages from failed tool calls.

This feature is in beta. Share your feedback in .

Non-default branch tracking generally available

Tier: Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

Non-default branch tracking is now generally available. You can track vulnerabilities on branches other than the default branch. For the best results, target a small number of long-lived release branches, such as branches for specific environments (project-qa, project-prod) or deployment platforms (project-iOS, project-android).

This release includes the following capabilities:

Track three additional branches or tags on the security configuration page. This is in addition to the default tracked branch.
Filter by tracked ref on the vulnerability report.
Filter by branch on the project-level security dashboard.
Update vulnerability status on tracked branches.
Vulnerability management policies evaluate each tracked branch separately and update only the vulnerabilities on that branch.

Restrict GitLab Duo access by subgroup membership

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

Administrators can now select any subgroup, not just top-level groups, in the Restrict access based on group membership setting for GitLab Duo. You can scope GitLab Duo Agent Platform access to a specific team or pilot group without restructuring your group hierarchy.

Previously, this setting accepted only top-level groups. Organizations with a single top-level group for all users had no supported way to limit GitLab Duo Agent Platform access to a subset of users.

Now, when you select a subgroup, direct members of that subgroup get access. This makes it easier to run a GitLab Duo Agent Platform pilot or roll out access one division at a time on GitLab Self-Managed and GitLab Dedicated.

Agentic Core

`/goal` command in GitLab Duo CLI is generally available

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

The /goal slash command in GitLab Duo CLI is now generally available in GitLab Duo CLI 9.27.0.

Describe an open-ended goal, and GitLab Duo delegates it to a governed, goal-driven flow that runs locally and handles both implementation and verification.

To start, run /goal <task>. For example:

In GitLab 19.5 (GitLab Duo CLI 9.24.0), the Run suggested prompts as /goal sessions setting in /settings runs suggested prompts as /goal sessions instead of chat messages.

/goal requires GitLab 19.3 and later, and GitLab Duo CLI 9.17.0 and later.

Auto mode in GitLab Duo CLI

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

GitLab Duo CLI has a new auto mode. In auto mode, GitLab Duo uses tools without asking for approval first, so longer tasks run without stopping for each shell command, git operation, or MCP tool call.

Auto mode respects your organization’s controls:

Auto mode is off by default. Administrators, Owners, and Maintainers can turn the setting on for instances, groups, and projects. Administrators and group Owners can also lock it to Always off for the entire instance or group.
Agent tool governance still applies. Tools set to Always Deny stay blocked.

To use auto mode, you need GitLab Duo CLI 9.22.0 or later. Press Tab until the mode under the > prompt shows auto. Use auto mode only in repositories you trust and on branches you can discard.

Configure GitLab Duo CLI with settings files

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

You can now configure GitLab Duo CLI with settings files, for yourself or for your whole organization.

The settings file stores the choices you make in the /settings panel. You can also edit the file directly, or create it in advance, for example in a container image.

System administrators can deploy a managed settings file to each machine with a mobile device management tool or group policy. Settings in the managed file take precedence over the settings file, command-line options, and environment variables, and users can’t change them. Settings not in the managed file remain under user control.

The settings file requires GitLab Duo CLI 9.26.0 or later, and the managed settings file requires GitLab Duo CLI 9.27.0 or later.

Follow-up reviews in Code Review Flow

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

In previous versions of GitLab, when you asked GitLab Duo to review a merge request again, it treated the review as a first pass. It could repeat findings from its earlier threads, even ones you had already addressed.

Now, Code Review Flow uses comment threads from earlier GitLab Duo reviews, including your replies, to evaluate new changes. GitLab Duo focuses on lines added after its last review, does not repeat points it already raised, and lists outstanding findings in its summary. If you reply on a thread to explain why the code is correct, GitLab Duo does not raise the point again.

To start a follow-up review, ask GitLab Duo to review the merge request again. With Start a new review on push turned on, GitLab Duo automatically starts a follow-up review when you push changes.

IAM roles for Amazon Bedrock self-hosted models

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

Previously, you could not control which AWS credentials the AI Gateway used for your Amazon Bedrock models. A single AWS identity needed access to all these models.

With this release, you can specify an IAM role for each model, and the AI Gateway assumes that role when calling the model. This way, each model gets only the AWS access it needs, even when the role is in another AWS account.

Image context in GitLab Duo CLI

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
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Previously, GitLab Duo CLI could read text files but could not use screenshots or diagrams as context. Now, when you run the CLI locally in interactive or headless mode, it can read images from your repository and attachments on issues, merge requests, and comments in the same project.

Image context requires GitLab Duo CLI 9.27.0 or later and a GitLab-managed model.

Improved first-run experience in GitLab Duo CLI

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

GitLab Duo CLI now helps new users get started without leaving the terminal:

On first run, an onboarding card helps you connect MCP servers and install GitLab plugins.
Each new session opens with prompts suggested from your open merge requests and issues. For a merge request prompt, GitLab Duo checks out the source branch first if it exists.
The status bar shows your branch, project, merge request, /goal progress, and MCP status.
The setup screen links to token creation and validates your token before saving.
Tips in the prompt and the /whatsnew command point you to new features.

To get the full experience, update to GitLab Duo CLI 9.28.0 or later.

MCP server CI/CD artifact tool

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
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Previously, if you needed an agent to check something inside a CI/CD job’s build artifacts, it had to download and unzip the whole archive just to read one file. Now the get_artifact_file MCP tool lets your agent read a single file directly from a job’s artifacts, whether it’s a log, a generated report, or a test fixture.

MCP server GitLab Duo agent and flow tools

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
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New GitLab Duo agent and flow tools let you invoke and track GitLab Duo agents and flows from any MCP client:

start_duo_session starts a session.
get_duo_session reads a session’s current state.
list_duo_sessions pages through your session history.
list_duo_agents_and_flows lists the GitLab Duo agents and flows enabled in a project.

MCP server groups tool

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

Previously, an agent connecting to GitLab over MCP had no way to discover which groups and subgroups you have access to without you hardcoding IDs or paths. The new list_groups tool lets your agent browse your organization’s group hierarchy on its own, so it can find the right group before acting instead of guessing at identifiers.

MCP server toolset selection

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
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You can now choose which toolsets the GitLab MCP server exposes. Every additional tool that isn’t required wastes space in the LLM’s context window, and runs the risk of confusing the LLM, especially if you are using multiple MCP servers at once.

New Agentic Chat UI generally available in IDEs

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

The redesigned GitLab Duo Agentic Chat UI in VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, introduced as a beta in GitLab 19.3, is now generally available and is the default layout. You no longer need to turn on beta and experimental features to use it.

The new layout has no tabs. You start conversations, view your chat history, and select an agent and model in the same view.

The new layout is the default in:

GitLab for VS Code 7.2.0 and later
GitLab Duo plugin for JetBrains IDEs 3.50.0 and later

To use the Software Development Flow or view the flows you have run, switch to the classic layout from the panel.

New rate limits for GitLab MCP server

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

If you connect an agent to GitLab over MCP today, nothing stops it from reconnecting or retrying faster than your workflow actually needs, and on GitLab.com that carries a cost.

Starting October 15, the GitLab MCP server on GitLab.com limits each user to 60 requests a minute on the Free tier and 600 on Premium and Ultimate. Every reconnect and retry counts toward your limit. If your agent starts getting rate-limited (HTTP 429) errors, check its reconnect and retry settings before upgrading to a higher tier.

Recommend reviewers with GitLab Duo

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

In previous versions of GitLab, you had to check each approval rule and guess who had time to review your merge request. Or you assigned a whole group and hoped someone picked it up.

Now you can use the Recommend Reviewers Flow to suggest reviewers instead. The flow is generally available.

For each approval rule, it recommends the minimum number of reviewers needed, based on availability, workload, time zone, and recent activity.

Recommendations appear in the Recommended section of the merge request sidebar. Hover over a user to see why they were recommended.

To get started, turn on the flow for your top-level group. It runs when a merge request is created, or you can create a trigger to run it when a draft is marked ready. To get new recommendations, select Refresh.

Software Development Flow requires updated IDE extensions

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

The Software Development Flow now runs on the GitLab Duo Agent Platform flow registry, the same foundation as other flows. The flow works the same way in your IDE, and new fixes and improvements go to this version.

To keep using the Software Development Flow, update your editor extension to one of these versions or later:

GitLab for VS Code 6.85.0
GitLab Duo plugin for JetBrains IDEs 3.40.0
GitLab for Visual Studio 0.79.0

Trigger flows with a generally available API

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

In previous versions of GitLab, the API endpoint you use to trigger GitLab Duo Agent Platform flows from CI/CD pipelines, scripts, and other automation was an experiment, so it was hard to know whether you could rely on it in production. Now the trigger a flow endpoint of the Flows API is generally available, so you can build production automation on it knowing it follows the GitLab REST API breaking changes policy.

Unified DevOps and Security

Child pipelines can depend on parent jobs optionally

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

Many development teams split large CI/CD setups into parent and child pipelines so each part is easier to manage. Until now, a child pipeline job couldn’t safely depend on a parent job that only runs under certain conditions, such as tests that run only when certain files change. If that parent job was skipped, the child job broke, so teams had to work around it with duplicate jobs or brittle scripts.

Now you can mark these dependencies as optional. If the parent job runs, the child waits for it as usual. If it doesn’t run, the child job goes ahead without it. Pipelines stay fast and reliable without the workarounds, and a failure in a job that does run still stops the pipeline, so quality checks aren’t weakened.

Thank you to Jimmy Spagnola for this contribution!

Customize security configuration profiles

Tier: Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

You can now customize Secret Detection and SAST profiles in the UI. Set scan options like excluded paths, custom analyzer images, and full Git history scans once for a group, and apply them to all its projects.

Previously, a security configuration profile enabled a scanner with its default settings. Anything beyond the defaults required edits to .gitlab-ci.yml in each project. Now the profile includes those settings too.

Currently, customization of Dependency Scanning profiles is only available through the GraphQL API. UI customization is planned in a future release.

Embed code from a repository in Markdown

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated, GitLab Dedicated for Government
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In previous versions of GitLab, permalinks to a file’s lines rendered as plain URLs, so you had to leave the merge request, issue, or wiki page to view the referenced code.

Now, permalinks render as a syntax-highlighted snippet with the file path and commit, so you can read the code without leaving the page. You can only view embedded snippets if you have read access to the repository.

GitLab Observability is now in beta

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

In previous versions of GitLab, Observability was an experiment. Now it’s in beta on GitLab.com and GitLab Self-Managed.

With GitLab Observability, you can send traces, metrics, and logs with OpenTelemetry, then explore them next to your code, merge requests, and CI/CD pipelines. On GitLab.com, each group or personal namespace opts in by selecting Enable Observability. On GitLab Self-Managed, you host the Observability backend and connect it to a group or personal namespace. Observability is available at no cost during the beta.

Sort Markdown tables by column

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated, GitLab Dedicated for Government
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In previous versions of GitLab, to find information in a large Markdown table, you had to scan every row or copy the table into a spreadsheet.

Now you can sort rendered Markdown tables by any column, in both view mode and preview. In a column header, select the sort button to sort rows in ascending or descending order, then reset to restore the original order. You can also sort with a keyboard.

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated, GitLab Dedicated for Government
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

In previous versions of GitLab, when you scrolled through a long table, the header row scrolled out of view, so it was hard to tell what each column contained.

Now, table headers stay visible at the top of the table as you scroll, in view mode, preview, and the rich text editor. Sticky headers are always on, so you don’t need to change any settings.

Business Logic Security Analyzer (closed beta)

Tier: Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

Business Logic Security Analyzer is a GitLab Duo Agent Platform foundational flow that reasons about what your code is meant to enforce. It finds vulnerabilities that pattern-based scanners often miss: broken object-level authorization, missing authorization checks, and mass assignment.

Start a whole-repository scan from GitLab Duo Chat or the API. To scan merge requests automatically, attach the Business Logic scan profile to a project. Findings appear in the vulnerability report and the merge request security widget.

Business Logic Security Analyzer is in closed beta for GitLab Ultimate customers on GitLab.com. To request access, contact your account team. Each scan consumes GitLab Credits. For prerequisites and setup, see Business logic scanning.

GitLab Relay (KAS) connections default to gRPC

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
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GitLab Relay (KAS) now uses gRPC by default. GitLab.com advertised grpcs://kas.gitlab.com in GitLab 19.4. In GitLab 19.5, new Linux package and Helm chart installations advertise grpcs:// too. New agent installations connect over grpcs:// instead of gRPC wrapped in WebSocket, which means one protocol to route and troubleshoot, and less overhead for each connection.

Agents that already connect over wss:// work, but you should move them. On GitLab.com, set the agent address to grpcs://kas.gitlab.com. For example, use --set config.kasAddress=grpcs://kas.gitlab.com when you upgrade the gitlab-agent Helm chart. On GitLab Self-Managed, use the address shown in the agent installation command after you upgrade.

Tier: Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

You can now share a filtered view of the security inventory with a link. Filter by tool coverage, vulnerability count, or project name, then copy the URL and send it. Whoever opens the link sees the same view.

Previously, only the project name search was saved in the URL, so a shared link lost the other filters. Now the full filter state is preserved, so you can bookmark a view or hand it to the team that owns those projects.

Scale and Deployments

Start a custom flow in GitLab Duo Agentic Chat

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

You can now start a custom flow directly from GitLab Duo Agentic Chat, without needing to configure a trigger first. Previously, running a custom flow required setting up a trigger event — a mention, an assignment, or similar — which made flows difficult to test and iterate on. Now, you can launch any AI Catalog flow enabled in your project by sending a message in GitLab Duo Agentic Chat. Your message becomes the goal for the flow. If you send no goal, the flow falls back to its own description. Chat links to the resulting agent session so you can follow along.

See your own GitLab Credits usage

Tier: Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com
Links: Documentation · Related Issue

If you used GitLab Credits, you had no way to check your own usage. Only group Owners and administrators could open the GitLab Credits dashboard, so you had to ask someone with access.

You can now see your own usage in User settings > GitLab Credits. The page shows your total usage, daily average, and peak day, and you can filter by product or select a date range. If you belong to more than one group with GitLab Credits, you can switch between them.