Get started with Orbit Remote

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.

Prerequisites

Owner role on the top-level group you want to enable Orbit on

Orbit indexes top-level groups only. Subgroups and projects inherit indexing automatically.

Step 1: Enable Orbit

On the left sidebar, expand Your Work.
Select Orbit > Configuration.
Find your top-level group in the Indexes list.
Toggle Enable.

Orbit begins indexing immediately. Initial indexing takes a few minutes for small groups and up to 30 minutes for groups with thousands of projects.

Check indexing status at any time:

curl --header "Authorization: Bearer <your_token>" \
  "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/orbit/status"

Step 2: Run your first query

Orbit Remote exposes the same graph through three surfaces. Pick the one that matches who’s querying:

Method	Best for	Setup	Billing
GitLab Duo Agent Platform	End users in the GitLab UI	None	Zero-rated
MCP	Claude Code, Codex, other AI agents	One-time agent config	GitLab Credits
REST API	Scripts, dashboards, custom tooling	API token	GitLab Credits

GitLab Duo Agent Platform (no setup required)

Orbit is wired into GitLab Duo Agent Platform. The GitLab Duo Agent, Planner Agent, Security Analyst Agent, Data Analyst Agent, CI Expert Agent, and Developer Flow call Orbit’s query_graph and get_graph_schema tools automatically when a question is best answered by graph traversal. No tool selection or configuration required.

For example, file a work item asking to rename the deploy_user method. The Developer Flow uses Orbit to identify every service that calls it, then drafts an MR that updates each one.

GitLab Duo queries are zero-rated and do not consume GitLab Credits.

MCP (Claude Code, Codex, other agents)

See Use Orbit via MCP for setup. Once configured, you have two tools: query_graph and get_graph_schema.

REST API

Replace your-group with the top-level group path you enabled Orbit on. The full_path filter scopes the query so it passes Orbit’s selectivity validation.

curl --request POST \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer <your_token>" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "query": {
      "query_type": "traversal",
      "node": {
        "id": "p",
        "entity": "Project",
        "columns": ["name", "full_path"],
        "filters": {
          "full_path": {"op": "starts_with", "value": "your-group/"}
        }
      },
      "limit": 10
    },
    "format": "raw"
  }' \
  "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/orbit/query"

What to try next

What Orbit indexes - understand coverage before writing queries
Schema reference - explore the 24 node types and their properties
Cookbook - copy-paste queries for common use cases
Get started with Orbit Local - query a local repository offline