Orbit Review Compass

Trigger it from a merge request and GitLab Orbit posts a review briefing in the MR: blast radius, reviewers, pipeline risk, security context, and a test plan.

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Inspiration

Merge request review usually starts with a diff and guesswork. The context that actually matters — dependencies, historical merge requests, pipelines, owners, and security findings — is scattered across GitLab. GitLab Orbit makes that context queryable, so Review Compass turns it into an actionable review map that lives in the MR.

What it does

Orbit Review Compass is a public AI Catalog flow for the GitLab Duo Agent Platform. Trigger it from a merge request and it uses GitLab Orbit to post one structured review briefing: risk headline, changed areas, blast radius, suggested reviewers, test plan, evidence, and sparse-data notes. It never approves or merges — it only creates review context.

How we built it

  • A GitLab Duo Agent Platform custom flow (flow YAML in the repo).
  • GitLab Orbit graph queries with a strict, bounded query budget (one schema call, then focused queries).
  • A project-level Agent Skill enforcing the review-output contract.
  • A custom-agent fallback for environments where custom flow creation is restricted.
  • A public, MIT-licensed GitLab repo with source, fixtures, and docs.

The bounded Orbit workflow: check graph schema, then query blast radius around changed files, recent MRs and likely owners, historical pipeline risk, and high/critical security context.

Challenges we ran into

The main design challenge was keeping the agent workflow bounded. A generic chat assistant is easy to build but weak for this. Review Compass uses a small fixed query sequence and a strict output contract so it produces a useful artifact every time. Sparse or beta graph data is handled explicitly — the briefing states what Orbit checked and what was unavailable, rather than inventing confidence.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • A concrete MR review workflow that uses Orbit meaningfully, not as a generic summary.
  • A public AI Catalog flow source plus a custom-agent fallback.
  • A deterministic fixture renderer that shows the exact MR comment shape.
  • Docs for publishing, demo recording, and judge verification.

What we learned

The best Orbit use cases are the moments where GitLab's SDLC graph answers a question the reviewer cannot quickly answer from the diff alone: who knows this code, what depends on it, what broke recently, and what must be tested.

What's next for Orbit Review Compass

  • Configurable team risk policies.
  • Convert briefings into MR approval checklist items.
  • Richer security-finding explanations.
  • Scheduled review summaries for release branches.

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