Orbit

  • Tier: Premium, Ultimate
  • Offering: GitLab.com
  • Status: Experiment

The availability of this feature is controlled by a feature flag. For more information, see the history. This feature is available for testing, but not ready for production use.

This page contains information related to upcoming products, features, and functionality. It is important to note that the information presented is for informational purposes only. Please do not rely on this information for purchasing or planning purposes. The development, release, and timing of any products, features, or functionality may be subject to change or delay and remain at the sole discretion of GitLab Inc.

Orbit indexes your GitLab instance and exposes your entire SDLC as a queryable knowledge graph. Enable it on a group and Orbit maps everything: projects, users, merge requests, pipelines, work items, security findings, and the source code itself, then builds a property graph of how they relate to each other.

Query the graph to answer questions your instance cannot answer directly:

  • What breaks if I change this service?
  • Which merge requests touched this file in the last 90 days?
  • Who has reviewed the most code in this group?
  • Where are the open critical vulnerabilities, and which pipelines introduced them?
  • Which projects depend on this library?

Orbit is an analytical system designed for point-in-time SDLC insight, not real-time or transactional use cases. Results reflect the state of your data as of the last index cycle.

Orbit Remote

On GitLab.com, Orbit Remote runs as a separate service on GitLab infrastructure. Enable it on a top-level group and it automatically indexes your entire SDLC and code - groups, projects, users, merge requests, pipelines, vulnerabilities, and source code - into a managed ClickHouse graph.

flowchart LR
    accTitle: Orbit Remote architecture
    accDescr: SDLC data streams from GitLab via CDC to the Data Insights Platform, then to ClickHouse. Code is served over the Rails internal API. Orbit reads both sources, builds the graph in ClickHouse, and exposes it via REST API, MCP tools, and GitLab Duo Agent Platform.

    subgraph GitLab["GitLab instance"]
        SDLC[SDLC data]
        Code[Source code]
    end

    SDLC -- CDC --> DIP[Data Insights Platform]
    DIP --> CH[(ClickHouse)]
    Code -- Rails API --> Orbit[Orbit service]
    CH <--> Orbit

    Orbit --> REST[REST API]
    Orbit --> MCP[MCP tools]
    Orbit --> DAP[GitLab Duo Agent Platform]

Orbit Remote runs as a separate service and shares minimal load with your GitLab instance.

Get started with Orbit Remote

Orbit Local

Orbit Local runs entirely on your machine. The orbit CLI parses a local repository, extracts definitions and cross-file references, and writes the graph to a local DuckDB file. No GitLab instance or network connection required.

flowchart LR
    accTitle: Orbit Local architecture
    accDescr: The orbit CLI parses a local repository, builds a code graph, and writes it to a local DuckDB file. You query the graph via the CLI.

    Repo[Local repository] --> CLI["orbit CLI"]
    CLI --> DB[("DuckDB\n~/.orbit/graph.duckdb")]
    DB --> Query[CLI query]

Orbit Local indexes code only. SDLC data - merge requests, pipelines, work items - requires Orbit Remote.

Get started with Orbit Local

What Orbit indexes

Orbit indexes two categories of data:

  • SDLC objects from your GitLab instance: groups, projects, users, merge requests, pipelines, jobs, work items, milestones, labels, and security findings.

  • Source code from your repositories: files, directories, function and class definitions, and cross-file import references. Code is indexed from the default branch only.

Orbit indexes code in Ruby, Java, Kotlin, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Rust, Go, C#, C, and C++.

Full indexing coverage | Schema reference

Get started