The New Stack Makers

AI coding assistants are boosting developer productivity, but most enterprises aren’t shipping software any faster. GitLab CEO Bill Staples says the reason is simple: coding was never the main bottleneck. After speaking with more than 60 customers, Staples found that developers spend only 10–20% of their time writing code. The remaining 80–90% is consumed by reviews, CI/CD pipelines, security scans, compliance checks, and deployment—areas that remain largely unautomated. Faster code generation only worsens downstream queues.GitLab’s response is its newly GA’ed Duo Agent Platform, designed to automate the full software development lifecycle. The platform introduces “agent flows,” multi-step orchestrations that can take work from issue creation through merge requests, testing, and validation. Staples argues that context is the key differentiator. Unlike standalone coding tools that only see local code, GitLab’s all-in-one platform gives agents access to issues, epics, pipeline history, security data, and more t