Working with large codebases often means spending significant time on repetitive tasks that, while necessary, don't really push your projects forward. The good news is that these tasks are great candidates to be completed with AI. Reducing the time spent on them will free you up to work on more important problems that you’re actually excited to tackle. With GitLab Duo Workflow, the time spent on these tasks will go from hours to minutes.
Duo Workflow is a powerful new agentic solution, currently in private beta, that lives in VS Code and is designed to help you complete complex development tasks. While many AI coding assistants are focused on helping developers write code, Duo Workflow understands your project structure, reads your files, and can make coordinated changes across your entire codebase.
I created a demonstration that showcases how Duo Workflow can transform a tedious coding task into a streamlined process that saves you time and mental energy.
The challenge: Implementing a new lint rule
In this demo, we tackle a common scenario that many developers face: implementing a new lint rule and then updating multiple files across the codebase to comply with this rule. The specific issue involves validation errors occurring in several project files that need to be addressed consistently.
Rather than manually identifying and modifying each affected file one by one – a process that could take hours depending on the size of your codebase – we'll see how Duo Workflow can:
- Read and understand the details from an issue
- Analyze the project structure to identify affected files
- Create a comprehensive plan to implement the necessary changes
- Draft a new lint rule to prevent future occurrences
- Make consistent code changes across all relevant files
- Stage the changes for your review before any commits are made
A simple prompt initiates the process:
"Read through issue #1 in this project and submit code changes to resolve it. Be sure to look at each tool file and make all appropriate changes."
From there, Duo Workflow takes over – reading the issue, analyzing the files, creating a plan, and implementing the solution – all while keeping me informed of its progress and reasoning.
Why this matters for your development process
What's particularly powerful about Duo Workflow is how it maintains awareness of this wider context throughout the entire process. It's not just making text replacements based on a large language model's training data – it's understanding the code, making intelligent decisions, and proposing a complete solution that you maintain full control over.
This approach offers several key benefits:
- Consistency in implementation: Apply changes uniformly across files
- Time savings: Focus your energy on creative problem-solving rather than repetitive tasks
- Reduced context switching: Complete complex tasks without leaving your IDE
- Keeping a human in the loop: Review all proposed modifications before committing
What's next
GitLab Duo Workflow is part of our work to bring AI-powered capabilities to every stage of the software development lifecycle. While this demo focuses on code editing, the same approach can be applied to various development tasks:
- Implementing new features based on issue descriptions
- Fixing bugs with comprehensive test coverage
- Refactoring legacy code to modern standards
- Creating documentation from codebase analysis
We believe that by automating repetitive tasks, Duo Workflow helps you focus on what matters most – solving interesting problems and creating innovative solutions for your users.
GitLab Duo Workflow is currently available in private beta for GitLab Ultimate customers. Sign up for the waitlist today!
