CodeCompass

Inspiration

As a developer, one of the biggest time sinks is jumping into an unfamiliar codebase. You spend hours just trying to understand what a project does, how it's structured, and where to even begin. I wanted to fix that.

What it does

CodeCompass is a GitLab Duo agent that uses GitLab Orbit's knowledge graph to instantly analyze any GitLab repository and return:

• A plain-English summary of what the project does
• A breakdown of key files and their purpose
• Suggested entry points for new contributors
• An overview of the tech stack detected in the repo

How we built it

• Built using the GitLab Duo Agent Platform
• Uses GitLab Orbit's API to query the repository knowledge graph
• Python backend that processes Orbit's structured context
• Published as a skill to the GitLab AI Catalog

Challenges we ran into

• Learning the GitLab Orbit API from scratch in under 24 hours
• Structuring the agent prompt to produce clean, readable summaries
• Getting the AI Catalog publishing workflow set up correctly

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Built a working agent as a complete beginner in under 19 hours
• The output is genuinely useful — it saves real onboarding time
• Successfully published to the GitLab AI Catalog

What we learned

• How GitLab Orbit structures codebase context as a knowledge graph
• How to build and deploy agents on the GitLab Duo Agent Platform
• That giving AI real structured context dramatically improves its output

What's next for CodeCompass

• Add support for comparing two repos side by side
• Generate onboarding README suggestions automatically
• Slack/email digest for when a repo changes significantly

Built With

• gitlab
• gitlab-duo-agent-platform
• gitlab-orbit-api
• gitlab-rest-api
• python
• python-dotenv