GitLab 19.3 release notes

GitLab 19.3, released on August 20, 2026, introduces the Flow Creator foundational agent in the AI Catalog for creating custom flows via plain-language conversation, GitLab Duo-powered merge conflict resolution and code review comment resolution, and GitLab Duo CLI plugins with marketplaces. The release also includes a redesigned Agentic Chat UI in the GitLab for VS Code extension 6.87.0 and a new get_merge_request API for retrieving merge requests with related data in a single call.

On August 20, 2026, GitLab 19.3 was released with the following features. We are excited to recognize gkepas https://gitlab.com/gkepas as this month’s Notable Contributor https://contributors.gitlab.com/notable-contributors Giannis has made sustained contributions across the GitLab codebase, the contributor platform, client-go , the Terraform provider, and GitLab Orbit. He is also an active translator and a member of the GitLab Community Discord. You can now use the Flow Creator, a purpose-built foundational agent in the AI Catalog, to create custom flows for the GitLab Duo Agent Platform through a plain-language conversation. With the Flow Creator, you describe what you want the flow to do, and the agent produces a complete, runnable flow YAML you can register and use immediately. The agent can also help you debug existing flows and explain framework concepts. In previous versions of GitLab, you had to resolve merge conflicts manually in the GitLab UI or from the command line, even for straightforward cases. Now you can ask GitLab Duo to resolve conflicts for you. Start conflict resolution from the merge widget or the Resolve conflicts page. GitLab Duo analyzes the conflicts, edits the files and commits the resolution to the source branch, and then posts a summary comment on the merge request describing what changed. In previous versions of GitLab, to resolve a code review comment, you had to switch to your editor, implement the fix, commit and push the change, and then manually close the thread. Now you can select Resolve with GitLab Duo and GitLab Duo will address the review discussion for you. GitLab Duo reads the comment and the surrounding code, makes the requested change on the source branch, replies to the discussion with a summary of what changed, and then resolves the thread. If the change does not address the comment correctly, you or the reviewer can reopen the thread. GitLab Duo CLI now supports plugins and plugin marketplaces as an experiment, introduced in GitLab Duo CLI 9.10.0. A plugin bundles Agent Skills, custom slash commands, and Model Context Protocol MCP servers into a single directory. A marketplace is a catalog of available plugins, hosted in a Git repository or a local directory. GitLab Duo CLI automatically registers the official gitlab-duo-plugins marketplace the first time you use plugins. The marketplace includes three skills for common GitLab workflows: mr-review : Reviews a merge request and posts comments. stack-changes : Splits a large local change into a stacked merge request chain. create-issue : Drafts a GitLab issue from a natural-language description.To install one of the skills, run glab duo cli plugin install <plugin @gitlab-duo-plugins or duo plugin install <plugin @gitlab-duo-plugins , based on your setup. For compatibility with the existing community plugin ecosystem, GitLab Duo CLI also reads .claude-plugin/marketplace.json files, so existing Claude Code plugin marketplaces work with GitLab Duo CLI without modification. The GitLab Duo Agentic Chat interface in the GitLab for VS Code extension has a redesigned UI, now available as a beta. The new interface is a rebuilt version of the existing Agentic Chat panel, with the same underlying capabilities: AI models, agents, slash commands, and tool approvals. The redesigned UI is available in GitLab 19.3 with GitLab for VS Code extension 6.87.0 and later. To use the new UI, turn on beta and experimental features /user/gitlab duo/turn on off/ turn-on-beta-and-experimental-features for your top-level group or instance, then reload the extension. You can switch between the new and classic UI at any time from the panel. The beta is available for VS Code only. You can now use get merge request to retrieve a merge request along with its diffs, commits, notes, pipelines, or discussions in a single call, so your AI agent no longer has to chain multiple requests to get the full picture of an MR. You can also use the new list merge requests tool to search and filter merge requests by author, assignee, reviewer, state, labels, or free-text query, making it easy to find exactly the MRs you care about without leaving your workflow. Previously, the mcp scope was hidden from the OAuth applications form in the Admin area, so you couldn’t pre-register an OAuth application for your MCP clients without using Dynamic Client Registration DCR . Now you can create a shared OAuth application with the mcp scope directly from the Admin area, giving your users a stable client ID to reuse and helping you avoid DCR rate limits on shared networks. Previously, when MCP clients connected to GitLab using OAuth Dynamic Client Registration DCR , all dynamically-registered OAuth applications appeared in the Admin Area with only a generic client name, making it impossible to tell which user authorized a given application. Now, when you approve an MCP OAuth connection, your username is automatically appended to the application name — for example, Unverified Dynamic Application kiro — authorized by @username . You can quickly identify which user is behind each dynamic OAuth application directly from the Admin Area, without any additional configuration. Previously, when you opened a session detail page, you had to manually expand individual activity log entries to find the agent’s current task list. Now, the session detail sidebar shows the agent’s latest plan automatically. You can view each task and its status, and a progress summary like “2 of 5 completed.” You can track what the agent is working on and how far along it is without digging through the activity log. Mistral has deprecated the Devstral 2 model, and GitLab has deprecated Devstral 2 for GitLab Duo Agent Platform Self-Hosted. Mistral Medium 3.5 is a supported alternative available from Mistral. If you use GitLab Self-Managed with self-hosted models, you can now use Amazon Bedrock Mantle as a supported provider. Mantle is an OpenAI-compatible inference engine for Amazon Bedrock, so you can use familiar OpenAI SDKs and integrations with Bedrock models. This feature is in beta. In previous versions of GitLab, you couldn’t stop merges from bypassing the train. Both the option to merge immediately and the REST API could skip merge train protections without restriction. For teams running high-velocity monorepos, a single merge that skips the train can cancel and restart every in-progress pipeline, multiplying CI costs and straining infrastructure. Now you can enforce merge train usage across the UI and API with a single project-level setting, preventing bypasses that cancel and restart in-progress pipelines. Owners and Administrators can still override the setting when needed. GitLab Secret Scanning for Source Code is now in beta, powered by a new GitLab-built scan engine. Unlike the default analyzer, which detects only known secret patterns, this analyzer also detects passwords and other unstructured secrets that fall outside standard ruleset coverage. It also uses multiple heuristic techniques to reduce false positives. The new analyzer replaces the default analyzer in the same secret detection job, matching existing vulnerability findings instead of creating duplicates. To get started, see turn on the analyzer /user/application security/secret detection/gitlab secret scanner/ turn-on-the-analyzer . During beta, only high-confidence findings are reported. We welcome any feedback you have in issue 609578 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/work items/609578 . Secret detection on the default branch now scans all commit diffs in a push when a prior commit reference is available, rather than scanning only the latest directory contents. This change closes a gap where secrets introduced and removed within the same push went undetected. The behavior now aligns with how secret detection works on merge requests and feature branches. This scanning catches secrets that briefly existed in your repository history even if removed before the pipeline completes. Security teams can now identify secrets that were ever committed, not just those present at HEAD. For more information, see pipeline secret detection coverage /user/application security/secret detection/pipeline/ coverage . Previously, MCP clients and AI tools could automatically register OAuth applications on your instance through Dynamic Client Registration DCR , which you couldn’t turn off. This made it difficult for administrators on GitLab Self-Managed and GitLab Dedicated instances to control which OAuth clients could connect. Now you can disable DCR entirely using the application settings API, giving you full control over which OAuth clients can access your instance. When DCR is disabled, clients must use a pre-registered OAuth application instead of registering automatically. GitLab 19.3 adds support for Software Package Data Exchange SPDX license expressions in CycloneDX Software Bill of Materials SBOM files you bring to GitLab. Previously, components with composite or custom licenses defined using SPDX expression syntax would appear as unknown. Now GitLab reads and stores the expression field from CycloneDX license entries, including complex expressions like MIT AND Apache-2.0 and custom license references using the LicenseRef- NAME syntax. SPDX expression support is especially useful for organizations that generate their own SBOMs and have components with complex or custom license expressions, giving you an accurate view of your license exposure without requiring GitLab-generated scans. For more information, see Bring your own CycloneDX SBOM /user/application security/dependency scanning/dependency scanning sbom/ . In earlier versions of GitLab, when secret push protection couldn’t complete a scan and allowed a push through unscanned, GitLab provided no customer-visible audit trail. Security and compliance teams had no way to monitor when secret push protection silently allowed a push to their repositories. GitLab 19.3 and later generates audit events /user/compliance/audit event types/ secret-detection for all fail-open scenarios, including ruleset errors, exceeded file and line limits, scan timeouts, and unexpected errors. Teams can now forward these events to external monitoring and alerting tools to maintain visibility into their security posture. In previous versions of GitLab, projects using the Bun JavaScript runtime and package manager had no dependency scanning coverage. Now, GitLab dependency scanning analyzes Bun projects by parsing bun.lock files the text-based JSONC format introduced in Bun 1.2 . Because Bun packages are sourced from the npm registry, the GitLab advisory database already covers these dependencies with no additional configuration required. Teams using Bun as an alternative to npm, yarn, or pnpm can now scan their projects for known vulnerabilities as part of their standard CI/CD pipelines. Eligible findings are also supported by dependency scanning auto-remediation. In the Vulnerability Report, you can now select multiple vulnerabilities and run SAST Vulnerability Resolution and SAST False Positive Analysis flows on all of them at once. We’re also releasing GitLab Runner 19.3 today GitLab Runner is the highly-scalable build agent that runs your CI/CD jobs and sends the results back to a GitLab instance. GitLab Runner works in conjunction with GitLab CI/CD, the open-source continuous integration service included with GitLab. What’s New Bug Fixes clear-docker-cache prunes all unused images when IMAGE FILTER FLAGS is empty When is unset PrintPodWarningEvents doesn’t work .git folder is corruptThe list of all changes is in the GitLab Runner CHANGELOG https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/blob/19-3-stable/CHANGELOG.md . GitLab now fully supports Kubernetes version 1.36. To deploy your applications to Kubernetes and access all features, upgrade your connected clusters to the most recent version. For more information, see supported Kubernetes versions for GitLab features /user/clusters/agent/ supported-kubernetes-versions-for-gitlab-features . The vulnerability details page has been refreshed with an updated design that makes reviewing and triaging vulnerabilities easier and more efficient. The Security Dashboard now includes a SAST triage and remediation funnel. This funnel shows how critical and high SAST vulnerabilities move through triage and remediation over a 30-, 60-, or 90-day window. The funnel traces each stage: detected vulnerabilities, true positives confirmed by SAST false positive detection, vulnerabilities with merge requests created by Agentic SAST Vulnerability Resolution, and vulnerabilities fixed by merged merge requests. These stages show how much of your workflow AI powers and which stages you can scale further. You can now opt-in to using PostgreSQL 18.4 when performing a fresh install using the Linux packages. Upgrades to PostgreSQL 18.4 for existing installations is not yet supported. For more information, refer to the relevant documentation https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/database/ pin-the-packaged-postgresql-version-fresh-installs-only . You can now set custom agents and custom flows to Restricted visibility for every group, subgroup, and project in your top-level group. Previously, you could only set a custom flow or agent to Private one project only or Public visible to everyone on GitLab.com . When you set the visibility to Restricted , the flow or agent is visible to only groups, subgroup, and projects in your top-level group. This ensures that internal logic about your custom agents and flows are not shared outside your company or organization. GitLab Advanced SAST now supports Objective-C and Swift, bringing the same interprocedural taint analysis it delivers for other languages to iOS development. The beta is available for all GitLab Ultimate customers starting in GitLab 19.3. The beta detects key OWASP Mobile Top 10 vulnerability classes, including insecure data storage, broken cryptography, insecure communication, and authentication and authorization flaws. When a vulnerability begins in one language and reaches a sink in the other, Advanced SAST detects the complete taint path, including paths that cross the Swift and Objective-C language boundary. To enable, set GITLAB ADVANCED SAST ENABLED: 'true' in your pipeline. If your project contains Objective-C or Swift files, the gitlab-advanced-sast-ext job runs automatically. For full setup instructions, see the Advanced SAST documentation /user/application security/sast/gitlab advanced sast/ . Share feedback in the beta feedback issue https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/work items/607091 . In previous versions of GitLab, you had no warning when your Flex usage approached a limit. GitLab now sends billing account managers an email notification when a product reaches 50%, 80%, or 100% of its monthly reservation, and when a capped product reaches its spend cap and is cut off for the rest of the billing period. Each threshold triggers at most one email per product per billing period, so you can act on overage early without getting repeat emails for the same threshold. On-demand usage can run up overage charges you didn’t plan for. Usage caps for GitLab Credits are now generally available: set a subscription-level cap on on-demand credits in Customers Portal, and set a default per-user cap or per-user overrides with the GraphQL API. When consumption reaches a cap, features that consume GitLab Credits, like GitLab Duo Agent Platform, are suspended until the next billing period begins or an administrator adjusts the cap. Usage caps were introduced in GitLab 18.11 behind the budget caps graphql api feature flag. In GitLab 19.3, the feature flag is removed. With GitLab Flex, overage from one capability draws down the same commitment every other capability depends on. You can now set a spend cap for each capability when you adjust your Flex reservation in the Customers Portal: Restricted no overage past the reservation , Usage cap a bounded amount of overage , or Unlimited unlimited overage past the reservation . When a capped capability reaches its cap, its usage stops for the rest of the billing period, and capabilities without a cap keep running.