How GitLab Orbit Local works

  • Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
  • Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated
  • Status: Beta

GitLab Orbit Local is experimental. Capabilities and command shape may change before GA.

Indexing pipeline

When you run orbit index, GitLab Orbit Local:

  1. Walks the current working tree, including uncommitted files and respecting .gitignore.
  2. Passes each source file to a language-specific parser (rust-analyzer, tree-sitter, or a custom parser depending on language).
  3. Extracts definitions (functions, classes, modules), import declarations, and cross-file symbol references.
  4. Writes the results into a DuckDB file for that checkout and commit under ~/.gitlab/orbit/local/revisions/.

Indexing does not enumerate or check out other Git branches. Each checkout or worktree is indexed from the files currently on disk.

The v2 pipeline runs all language parsers in parallel. Indexing a medium-sized repository typically completes in seconds.

The graph model

GitLab Orbit Local builds a code-only graph. It does not have access to SDLC data (merge requests, pipelines, users) because there is no GitLab connection.

Nodes in the local graph:

  • File - a source file in the repository
  • Directory - a directory in the repository
  • Definition - a function, class, module, or other named symbol
  • ImportedSymbol - a symbol imported from another file or package

Edges connect files to their definitions, files to their imports, and definitions to the symbols they reference across files.

Query execution

GitLab Orbit Local exposes the graph as a DuckDB database. Run any read-only SQL against it with orbit sql:

  1. orbit sql attaches all indexed revisions read-only to one DuckDB client. Use --repo to select a checkout revision.
  2. Your SQL runs directly against the graph tables — no DSL compilation, no authorization layer.
  3. Results stream back as a table, JSON, NDJSON, or CSV.

All data in the graph is accessible to whoever runs the CLI.

Storage

GitLab Orbit Local stores each checkout revision in a separate DuckDB file under ~/.gitlab/orbit/local/, as described in storage and upgrades.

Supported languages

See index data with GitLab Orbit for the shared language-support table.

Billing

GitLab Orbit Local does not consume GitLab Credits. All processing is local.