GitLab 18.2: Duo Agent Platform for VS Code and JetBrains released as beta

GitLab's July release with version number 18.2 is now available. As in previous releases, the development platform focuses on the use of AI and provides the "Duo Agent Platform in the IDE" with beta status. In addition, a new merge request homepage has been released and security with regard to container images is to be increased through immutable container tags.

GitLab Duo Agent Platform in the IDE: code interaction with natural language

The AI service GitLab Duo Agent Platform for IDEs is now available as a beta version for paying GitLab customers. The platform comes with Agentic Chat and Agent Flows and can be used with extensions in Visual Studio Code and JetBrains development environments. This allows developers to interact with their codebases and GitLab projects in natural language.

Agentic Chat is designed to perform quick tasks such as creating and editing files or searching for files in codebases using pattern matching and grep. Agent Flows, on the other hand, are designed to handle larger implementations and planning to advance ideas from concept to architecture. Agent Flows use GitLab resources such as issues, merge requests, commits, CI/CD pipelines and security vulnerability information.

The Duo Agent Platform also supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP). A dedicated blog entry provides detailed information on the platform. Further features are to be added in the coming weeks, including integration with GitLab, support for Visual Studio and an AI catalog for selecting specialized agents and flows:

New homepage for merge requests and security feature for containers

A new merge request homepage is available for users of all GitLab editions. According to the GitLab team, this is intended to intelligently prioritize which aspects currently require attention. Two views are available for this purpose: The Workflow View organizes merge requests according to their review status and groups them according to their stage in the code review workflow. The Role View, on the other hand, groups merge requests based on whether the viewer is either an author or a reviewer.

One of the other updates in GitLab 18.2 is aimed exclusively at Ultimate users and is intended to increase security: They can now use immutable (unchangeable) container tags to protect their container images from unwanted changes. Once a tag has been created that corresponds to an immutable rule, the container image can no longer be changed by anyone. There are some restrictions, including that only up to five rules can be used per project and the Next-Generation Container Registry (activated by default on GitLab.com) is required.

Further information on these and other new features in GitLab 18.2 can be found on the GitLab blog. In total, over 30 new features have been included in the release.

(mai)