Set up AI coding agents with the Orbit skill

The Orbit skill gives AI coding agents structured guidance for querying the GitLab Knowledge Graph. It includes:

• Query recipes - paste-ready JSON bodies for common questions (blast radius, pipeline history, contributor patterns).
• DSL reference - the full query language so agents compose valid queries on the first attempt.
• Troubleshooting - exit codes, empty-result diagnostics, and common pitfalls.
• Repository map helpers - scripts that summarize codebase structure from a local checkout or from Orbit Remote.

The skill works with both Orbit Remote and Orbit Local.

Prerequisites

• GitLab CLI (glab) v1.95.0 or later, which introduced glab skills install. If the subcommand is not recognized, update glab first.

Install the skill

Install globally (available to every project):

glab skills install --global orbit

This installs the skill to ~/.agents/skills/orbit.

Install for the current project only:

glab skills install orbit

This installs the skill to .agents/skills/orbit in the project root.

If the skill is already installed, glab reports that SKILL.md exists and suggests --force to overwrite.

Update the skill

To update to the latest version, re-run the install command with --force:

glab skills install --global --force orbit