GitLab users bring firsthand experience of the workflows they want to improve. Through our Co-Create program, they collaborate directly with us to design, build, and deliver product improvements that benefit more teams.
In the first half of 2026, our users helped us extend APIs, add CI/CD capabilities, expand language support for AI-powered code understanding, strengthen security controls, increase the flexibility of integrations, and make GitLab easier to use and understand.
Co-Create gives customers a direct path from a real-world challenge to a product improvement. Customers collaborate with us on the problem and solution, and help deliver the change. Unlike a feedback-only model, this puts real workflow context into the product development process. It creates a shorter path from need to value while helping us validate improvements in real conditions and extend their benefits to more GitLab users.
From a specific need to a shared improvement“Over ten years ago, we set out to build code.siemens.com, our internal coding platform based on GitLab, which today serves close to 100,000 people. We’ve run and scaled the platform with a tiny team, guided by a 'for developers, from developers' philosophy. We co-created hundreds of features such as x509/gpg signed commits, protected container/packages, and project and social features such as follow users, allowing us to strengthen the security and collaboration culture at the scale of Siemens.”
— Roger Meier, Distinguished Engineer, Siemens
Some of the best product improvements start with a specific, real-world need.
GitLab contributors helped us address the following needs:
- Making Scala codebases understandable to Orbit and GitLab Duo
- Giving security administrators a way to enforce Secret Push Protection across an entire instance
- Letting high-throughput teams configure merge train pipeline limits
- Showing the platforms supported by multi-architecture images
- Providing screen reader users with more context on documentation pages
These are different problems, but they have something in common. They are specific enough to solve and important enough that the solution can help more than the person who first raised it.
In the first half of 2026, more than 650 contributors made 4,874 product improvements across more than 100 product groups. These changes included product and CI/CD catalog work. The number matters less than what those changes made possible for users.
Expanding what teams can automateGitLab users helped us expand the ways teams can connect GitLab to their existing tools and workflows.
The new User Applications REST API lets teams programmatically create, view, update, and delete user-owned OAuth applications. That gives teams a safer way to manage applications for workflows such as dynamically deploying and removing review apps without relying on wildcard redirect URIs.
GitLab users also added SCIM token support to the Token Information API. Identity and access management systems can now identify SCIM tokens through the same API used to inspect other GitLab tokens, making it easier to build accurate automation around token inventory and governance.
New CI_TRACEPARENT and CI_TRACESTATE predefined variables bring W3C Trace Context into CI/CD jobs. Teams can now correlate traces across parent and child pipelines and follow work across distributed systems, making it easier to understand how delivery workflows behave end to end.
These improvements give teams more control over integrations, make automation more capable, and help them operate GitLab as part of a larger engineering system.
Building security and delivery controlsThrough Co-Create, our users also helped us expand the controls teams use to protect code and manage delivery at scale.
A team engaged with us to add an instance-level enforcement setting for Secret Push Protection. Administrators can now mandate Secret Push Protection across all projects, giving security teams a consistent way to apply the control across an entire GitLab instance.
Another contributor implemented configurable merge train pipeline limits. Teams can now set limits that match their plan and capacity, giving organizations with high-volume development workflows more control over how changes move through validation and merge.
GitLab users also helped us complete the REST API for Terraform state protection rules. Teams can retrieve, create, update, and delete protection rules programmatically, making it easier to apply infrastructure-as-code governance consistently across projects.
These outcomes give teams more control over security and delivery without forcing them to manage each project manually.
Giving more codebases and workflows useful contextGitLab users also helped us extend what GitLab can understand and show.
A contributor added Scala language support to GitLab Orbit, which indexes your GitLab instance and exposes your software development lifecycle as a queryable property graph. Scala repositories can now produce code-graph definitions for classes, traits, objects, functions, and values, giving GitLab Duo useful context when working with Scala codebases.
Another contributor added supported-platform details to container image indexes. Teams can now see which operating systems and architectures an image supports directly in the container registry, making it easier to select the right image for a target environment.
These improvements broaden the range of codebases GitLab can understand and give teams clearer information when they choose, configure, and operate software.
Making GitLab easier to use for more peopleOur contributors also improve the details that determine whether a feature is understandable and accessible in real-world conditions.
They helped us improve API documentation by clarifying tier information for merge request approval endpoints. Developers can now distinguish which endpoints are available on the Free tier and choose the right API for their needs without trial and error.
GitLab users also improved the experience of navigating and reading GitLab. Examples include support for non-Latin heading slugs in non-Markdown markup, more descriptive alternative text for diagrams, a clearer explanation of the period keyboard shortcut for opening the Web IDE, and a PDF export option for Markdown files.
Each improvement removes a different kind of friction. A user can find the right section of a document, a screen reader user gets useful context, a new user discovers a shortcut, and a team can share installation instructions without maintaining a second copy outside the repository.
Accessibility and usability are not separate from product quality. They are product quality, measured in whether more people can understand, navigate, and use the same workflow successfully.
Collaboration extends beyond codeProduct changes are only one way to collaborate. The Contributor Platform also supports documentation, translation, project templates, discussions, and events. Translation is a direct product outcome: people help make GitLab available in more languages, and reviewed translations can be included in future GitLab releases. These paths make it easier to improve, understand, and use GitLab.
Build with usCo-Create can take many forms.
The common thread is shared product impact. It starts with a real need and ends with a clearer, safer, faster, or more capable experience for other GitLab users.
If you have an idea for how to improve GitLab, take action and co-create the solution with us. If you do not have a specific idea but want to help improve GitLab for everyone, pick up an existing issue and help us solve it.
Co-Create supports different ways to collaborate.
- For individuals who want to improve GitLab, use the Contributor Platform to find guidance and useful resources for getting involved.
- For teams and organizations seeking guided, direct collaboration with GitLab, explore a Co-Create engagement.
The path can vary. The outcome is what matters.