Deep Dive into GitLab Duo: Leveraging Custom Rules and Agentic Chat

Exploring GitLab Duo: Custom Rules and Agentic Chat in Depth

GitLab continues to redefine DevSecOps productivity with innovations through GitLab Duo, their AI-assisted suite, notably featuring the new Custom Rules and Agentic Chat. These tools provide engineering teams with powerful capabilities to automate security policies and collaborate with intelligent agents directly within the GitLab platform.

The Custom Rules feature allows users to define specific protocols across their security scanning pipeline with precise YAML-based rule writing. By leveraging the GitLab Rules DSL, teams can script unique actions in response to specific types of scanning vulnerabilities—for example, choosing to open an issue, block a pipeline, or even ignore a finding after thorough consideration. This automates remediation workflows, reduces manual overhead, and ensures a secure, policy-driven development approach. It’s about empowering developers to codify their contextual understanding into enforceable practices.

Meanwhile, the Agentic Chat enhances interaction between AI and the user by acting as an always-on assistant within GitLab. Unlike simple code completion tools, Agentic Chat operates like a co-pilot. It can ingest issues, epics, and merge requests, ask clarifying questions, and assist in delivering meaningful insights tailor-made to the current context. It seamlessly navigates between repos, recognises core CI/CD files, and even contributes to your documentation efforts.

Both features are prime examples of GitLab’s dedication to operationalising intelligence at every stage of the software development lifecycle. By embedding custom automation and conversational AI into a unified DevSecOps platform, teams benefit from efficiency, security, and innovation at scale.

If you’re located in Czech Republic, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Israel, South Africa, or Paraguay, our experienced team at IDEA GitLab Solutions can assist you with end-to-end consulting, GitLab licensing, and AI-powered DevSecOps transformation. Contact us today to bring GitLab Duo’s potential to your software teams.

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