GitLab external content connector

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 1 minute to read

    • The GitLab external content connector retrieves issues, wikis, merge requests, tags, branches, and commits from groups, projects, and repositories in your GitLab.com source system and makes their content and metadata searchable in AI Search applications.

    Connector administrators can run or schedule content crawls to retrieve updated content and access permissions from your source system, or user permission crawls to retrieve updated security principals from your source system. Both types of crawl feed their data to AI Search for indexing.

    The indexed content and metadata are stored as records in a connector-specific indexed source. Search administrators can create search sources from this indexed source and link them to search profiles to make the indexed records searchable in AI Search applications.

    Prerequisites for the GitLab external content connector

    To use the GitLab external content connector, your GitLab plan must satisfy all of these conditions:
    Offering

    You must be using the GitLab.com offering, not GitLab Dedicated or GitLab Self-Managed.

    To learn more about GitLab offerings, see https://docs.gitlab.com/subscriptions/choosing_subscription/#choose-an-offering.

    Group owner user account
    You need a GitLab.com user account that owns all the public and private top-level groups you want the external content connector to crawl. The connector impersonates this user when retrieving searchable content, user access permissions, and security principals from your GitLab source system.
    Public content requirements
    Public content you want to retrieve must be in public top-level groups owned by your group owner user.
    Private content requirements

    Private content you want to retrieve must be in a private top-level group on the Ultimate subscription tier. This group must be owned by your group owner user, and you must have configured access permissions for enterprise users in this private group. (The connector only retrieves user access permissions and security principals for enterprise users.)

    To learn more about GitLab subscription tiers, see https://docs.gitlab.com/subscriptions/choosing_subscription/#choose-a-subscription-tier. For information about GitLab enterprise users, see https://docs.gitlab.com/user/enterprise_user/.

    Limitations for the GitLab external content connector

    The GitLab external content connector does not retrieve searchable content from personal GitLab.com projects.

    When retrieving security principals from your GitLab.com source system, the GitLab external content connector does not support any of these security features: