Back to Help

Connect GitLab so your AI employee can use your repos

Add a GitLab access token so your AI employee can clone, read, and push to your GitLab repositories — on GitLab.com or a self-hosted instance.

GitLab personal access tokens

Why we ask for this

For your AI employee to work on your code, it needs permission to reach your repositories. A GitLab access token is that permission — it lets the container clone a project, read its files, and push commits back, exactly as if you ran git yourself.

You stay in control of how much access it grants. Use a scoped or fine-grained token limited to the repositories and permissions you actually need, and set an expiry date so it cannot live forever. If you only need read and write to repos, prefer the "read_repository" + "write_repository" scopes over full "api".

The token is stored encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) and scoped to your user account, never baked into the container image. It is decrypted and set as an environment variable inside your isolated container only when a session starts, and you can revoke it from GitLab at any time without affecting anything else.

Where to get your token

  1. 1Sign in to GitLab and open your avatar menu → Edit profile → Access Tokens (or Preferences → Access Tokens).
  2. 2Click "Add new token", give it a clear name, and optionally set an expiry date.
  3. 3Choose scopes: "api" for full repository access, or the narrower pair "read_repository" + "write_repository" if you only need clone and push.
  4. 4Click "Create personal access token" and copy it immediately — GitLab shows it only once.
  5. 5Paste it into the GITLAB_TOKEN field.
  6. 6If you use a self-hosted GitLab, also enter your instance base URL (for example https://gitlab.yourcompany.com) in the GITLAB_OAUTH_BASE_URL field so your AI employee talks to the right server.

Self-hosted GitLab

If your repositories live on a self-hosted GitLab rather than gitlab.com, your AI employee needs to know where that server is. Set GITLAB_OAUTH_BASE_URL to your instance base URL so clone and push operations target your own server instead of gitlab.com.

Help & Knowledge Base