April is packed: GitLab 18.10, agentic AI momentum, and big community moments

Hi everyone, it’s Fatima and welcome to the April Monday Merge.

This month is packed. We’re talking GitLab 18.10, expanded access to agentic AI, a big step forward with Claude Marketplace, a global Hackathon, and some incredible real-world results from our customers.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get into it 👇👇👇👇👇👇👇

GitLab 18.10: Unlocking Agentic AI Across the SDLC

AI has made writing code faster than ever. But as many teams are seeing, that’s not where the real bottlenecks are anymore.

It’s everything that happens after.

GitLab 18.10 is designed to bring agentic AI deeper into the software lifecycle, making it easier, more affordable, and more practical for teams of all sizes to adopt.

Here are a few highlights I’m really excited about:

• Agentic AI access for everyone: Teams on the GitLab.com free tier can now start using GitLab Duo Agent Platform by purchasing a monthly commitment of GitLab Credits without per-seat costs
• Agentic Code Review is now at a flat cost of $0.25 per review (4 code reviews per GitLab Credit today), making it simple to scale across every project and merge request without unpredictable costs
• SAST false positive detection is now generally available to GitLab Ultimate customers using GitLab Duo Agent Platform, helping security and development teams better prioritize serious vulnerabilities and remediation
• 60+ improvements across the platform. From planning to security to CI/CD, this release is all about removing the bottlenecks that slow teams down between commits.

The big shift here is clear. We’re moving from AI that helps you write code faster to AI that helps with all of the software engineering tasks that must happen afterward.

🔗 Full release notes here.

GitLab Duo Agent Platform Now Available in the Claude Marketplace

Organizations can now use their existing Anthropic commitment to purchase GitLab and orchestrate agentic AI across the entire software lifecycle, while maintaining enterprise-grade security, quality, and governance.

(Yes… Flowlands was real. Kind of.)

If you saw something about a GitLab theme park recently, you weren’t imagining things.

Flowlands was our April Fools’ idea. A slightly outrageous, fully imagined world where software development becomes a physical experience.

And honestly, we’d all go.

🎢🎡🎪🎠 If you missed it, enjoy the theme park carousel here! (Pun intended)

GitLab Hackathon: April 16 - 23, 2026

Back to reality.

Our global GitLab Hackathon runs from April 16 - 23, 2026, and it’s one of the best ways to get hands-on with the platform and the community.

• Contribute to real GitLab projects
• Collaborate with a global open source community
• Build across code, documentation, UX, and more
• Win prizes and level up your GitLab profileWhether you’re new or experienced, it’s a great way to jump in and start building.

Whether you’re new or experienced, it’s a great way to jump in and start building.

🔗 Join us here, everyone can contribute!

Customer spotlight: Canada Life

One of the most exciting things I've seen this month is seeing what happens when teams really lean into AI.

We partnered with Canada Life for a two-day AI Hackathon. Over 100 participants from dev, security, compliance, and business teams came together to build real, enterprise-grade solutions.

And the results were incredible:

• 10 enterprise-grade AI solutions built in just 48 hours
• 40% reduction in code review time
• 90% less time generating release notes
• 80% decrease in compliance violations

They also built things like a legacy code modernization assistant with a 96.7% cost reduction and a developer onboarding assistant that cut onboarding time in half.

As they said:

“If this is what we can achieve in 48 hours, imagine what’s ahead.”

Upcoming events

We’ve got a huge lineup of events this month, both virtual and in-person, and we’d love to see you there.

Here are some highlights:

🔗 Wherever you are in the world, there’s something happening so check out our events page here!

What we’re reading

We’ve got our heads down in some great reads this month.

We’re exploring how government teams are modernizing with AI-powered DevOps, from reducing technical debt to embedding security earlier in the lifecycle.

We’re also looking at how AI adoption is evolving across enterprises, especially when it comes to orchestrating workflows beyond just code generation and managing complexity across the SDLC.

🔖 Bookmark these for when you’ve got a quiet moment to dig in!

We really have a lot happening this April. Agentic AI is creating space for more experimentation and exploration, and it got me thinking about this:

“All sorts of things can happen when you’re open to new ideas and playing around with things.”

Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of Kevlar, said this. And it feels especially relevant right now.

As AI takes care of more of the repetitive work, developers have more space to experiment, explore, and build what’s next.

That’s it for this month’s merge

Thanks for joining, and as always… happy merging 🚀

Fatima Sarah Khalid | Sr. Developer Advocate, GitLab

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