gitlab-foss/doc/development/duo_workflow/_index.md

stage, group, info, title

stage	group	info	title
AI-powered	Duo Workflow	Any user with at least the Maintainer role can merge updates to this content. For details, see https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/development_processes.html#development-guidelines-review.	Development of GitLab Duo Workflow

How to set up the local development environment to run GitLab Duo Workflow.

Prerequisites

• GitLab Ultimate license
• Vertex access: You need access to the ai-enablement-dev-69497ba7 project in GCP because GDK by default uses Anthropic hosted on Vertex. Access to this project should be available to all engineers at GitLab.
  • If you do not have Vertex access for any reason, you should unset DUO_WORKFLOW__VERTEX_PROJECT_ID in the Duo Workflow Service and set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY to a regular Anthropic API key
• Various settings and feature flags, which are enabled for you by the GDK setup script

Set up local development for Workflow

Workflow consists of four separate services:

1. GitLab instance
2. GitLab Duo Workflow Service, which is part of the GitLab AI Gateway
3. GitLab Duo Workflow Executor
4. GitLab Duo Workflow Webview

Development Setup for Backend Components

You should set up GitLab Duo Workflow with the GitLab Development Kit (GDK) to run local versions of GitLab, Duo Workflow Service, and Executor.

This setup can be used as-is with the publicly available version of the VS Code Extension.

Development Setup for Frontend Components

There is no need to set up the backend components of Duo Workflow to test changes for the GitLab Duo Workflow UI.

A local build of the UI is required if you are making Duo Workflow UI changes that you need to view locally. A local build is also required if you want to use a version of the UI that has not been released yet.

Refer to the GitLab Duo Workflow README file in the Language Server project to get started with local development of GitLab Duo Workflow UI.

Development settings

Each of these settings can be turned on in your user settings in VS Code.

Change view type

Enable the Duo Workflow as a sidepanel instead of fullview. This is going to be the default for public beta.

"gitlab.featureFlags.duoWorkflowPanel": true,

Executor type

Allow to define which Duo Workflow executor is selected. Accepts:

• shell - Current default, runs the go binary directly on the user's machine
• docker - Runs the go binary inside a Docker container (deprecated)
• node - Runs a nodeJs/TypeScript executor directly inside the languge server. Expected to become the default.

"gitlab.duo.workflow.executor": "node",

Workflow graph

Experimental settings that allow Duo Workflow graph to be swapped. Includes:

• software_development - default
• chat - used by agentic chat
• search_and_replace - Used to scan large number of files and replace results with specific instructions

"gitlab.duo.workflow.graph": "software_development",

Tool approval

Allow users to get access to tools that require approval such as running terminal commands.

"gitlab.duo.workflow.toolApproval": true