Orbit Onboarding Skill

Inspiration

Every time a developer joins a new GitLab project, they lose 1–3 days just figuring out where things live, who owns what, and where to start contributing. This is pure friction — and it's the same every time, for every team, on every project.

GitLab Orbit already has all this information in its knowledge graph. It just wasn't surfaced for new contributors. That's what this skill fixes.

What it does

The Orbit Onboarding Skill gives new developers a personalized onboarding guide in under 60 seconds. Type /orbit-onboarding in GitLab Duo and it:

1. Maps the architecture — key directories, entry points, tech stack
2. Finds the owners — who actively owns which areas of the codebase
3. Surfaces recent activity — open MRs and what the team is working on right now
4. Finds your first issue — unassigned, beginner-labeled, in well-covered areas
5. Compiles a guide — one structured markdown doc, ready to act on

How I built it

Built as a GitLab Duo Agent Skill using the SKILL.md format on the GitLab Duo Agent Platform. GitLab Orbit powers all five knowledge graph queries — architecture, code ownership, recent MRs, active milestones, and good first issues. No backend required — the skill runs entirely within the GitLab Duo agent runtime.

Challenges I ran into

Designing the skill to be genuinely useful across different project types — monorepos, microservices, libraries — required careful handling of edge cases like missing CODEOWNERS files and inactive projects.

What I learned

GitLab Orbit's knowledge graph contains everything a new developer needs to get started — it just needs to be surfaced in the right way. Skills are a powerful, lightweight way to package domain expertise into the AI agent workflow.

What's next

Publishing to the GitLab AI Catalog so any team can install it with one command.

Built With

• gitlab-cli-(glab)
• gitlab-duo-agent-platform
• gitlab-orbit
• markdown
• mit