gitlab-active-context

Backend-agnostic retrieval and embeddings framework. Powers Duo Chat, Code Review context, and search retrieval.

Source

gems/gitlab-active-context/. Used heavily from ee/lib/active_context/.

What it provides

• A "Collection" abstraction: a logical store of documents (issues, MRs, code blobs, etc.).
• Pluggable backends:
  • Postgres + pgvector.
  • ClickHouse with vector indexes.
  • Elasticsearch / OpenSearch.
• A unified query API supporting both lexical and vector search.
• Hybrid scoring (lexical + semantic).
• Migrations for collections, similar in spirit to Elasticsearch reindexing migrations.

Why a gem

It's expected to be reused by other GitLab services (AI Gateway, Duo Workflow Service). Extracting it as a gem keeps it loosely coupled.

Related

• Search.
• GitLab Duo.
• ClickHouse.