GitLab Duo Agent Platform allows users to create custom agents that understand their specific application, GitOps workflow, and conventions, and then perform complex onboarding tasks for them. This is particularly useful for tasks such as onboarding a new microservice into an established GitOps deployment workflow, which can be complex, repetitive, and time-consuming.
Overview
The process of onboarding a new microservice involves generating bespoke manifests, updating delivery pipelines, configuring image automation, and ensuring that every piece references the right namespaces, ports, and hostnames. If a step is missed, the deployment breaks. Manual completion of this task can take hours or even a whole day.
Creating a Custom Agent
To create a custom agent, users can utilize GitLab Agentic Chat to generate a system prompt that captures the details of their GitOps workflow. The system prompt is then used to create a new agent, which can be enabled in the relevant projects. The agent can then be used to onboard new microservices, generating the necessary manifests and updating the pipelines as required.
The benefits of using a custom agent include compressing complex setup work into minutes, capturing organizational knowledge and context, and providing a reusable asset that can be invoked by authorized team members. The agent is defined in a managed project, which means its access, visibility, and scope are controlled in the same way as other GitLab resources. All artifacts created by the agent are fully versioned and auditable, providing the speed of AI automation without sacrificing governance and traceability.
Tradeoffs
While the use of custom agents can significantly reduce the time and effort required for onboarding new microservices, it does require some initial setup and configuration. Users must generate a system prompt, create a new agent, and enable it in the relevant projects. However, once the agent is set up, it can be used to automate the onboarding process, freeing up engineers to focus on higher-value problems.
In conclusion, the GitLab Duo Agent Platform provides a powerful tool for automating deployment processes, particularly for complex and repetitive tasks such as onboarding new microservices. By creating a custom agent that understands the specific application, GitOps workflow, and conventions, users can significantly reduce the time and effort required for these tasks, while also providing a reusable asset that can be invoked by authorized team members.