AI Clients

The AI Clients stage owns the surfaces through which developers and users interact with GitLab Duo AI capabilities — including editor extensions, the Duo CLI, the Duo Chat web interface, and the shared client SDK.

🚀 Mission

The AI Clients stage owns the surfaces where customers experience GitLab Duo. We bring GitLab’s AI capabilities directly into the tools customers already use — their IDE, terminal, and the GitLab web interface — and we provide the shared client SDK that powers those experiences across platforms.

Organizational Structure

The AI Clients stage is organised into three groups, each with functional teams:

graph TD
    S["AI Clients<br>(stage)"] --> DC["Developer Clients<br>(group)"]
    S --> SDK["Duo Client SDK<br>(group)"]
    S --> CHAT["Duo Chat<br>(group)"]
    DC --> CLI[Duo CLI]
    DC --> VSC[VS Code]
    DC --> JB[JetBrains]
    SDK --> SDKT[Duo Client SDK]
    CHAT --> WC[Web Chat]
    CHAT --> CE[Chat Engine]

Group	Engineering Manager	Product Manager	UX	Functional Teams
Developer Clients	Amr Elhusseiny	James Casey	Yi-Ann Chen	Duo CLI, VS Code, JetBrains
Duo Client SDK	Donald Cook	James Casey	Yi-Ann Chen	Duo Client SDK
Duo Chat	Donald Cook	Dasha Adushkina	Nick Leonard	Web Chat, Chat Engine

👥 Leadership

Person	Role
Donald Cook	Engineering Manager — AI Clients Stage (Duo Client SDK & Duo Chat)
↳ Amr Elhusseiny	Engineering Manager — Developer Clients

🤝 Stable Counterparts

The following people are stable counterparts of the AI Clients stage:

Name	Role
James Casey	Director of Product
Dasha Adushkina	Senior Product Manager
Yi-Ann Chen	Senior Product Designer, AI
Nick Leonard	Staff Product Designer, Plan:Project Management
Erran Carey	Staff Fullstack Engineer, AI Powered:Editor Extensions

Groups

Developer Clients

Owns the editor extension integrations and the Duo CLI. See the Developer Clients group page. Functional teams:

Duo Client SDK

Owns the shared language server and client SDK that powers AI features across all editor extensions. See the Duo Client SDK group page. Functional teams:

Duo Client SDK

Duo Chat

Owns the Duo Chat experience across all surfaces. See the Duo Chat group page. Functional teams:

🏷️ How we label issues and merge requests

Labels power triage-ops automation, reporting, and Technical Writing planning. Every issue and MR should carry section::ai, exactly one stage label (devops::*), exactly one group label (group::*), and the relevant category label(s) — use the combinations below as the default:

Area	Labels
Duo CLI (terminal client)	`section::ai`, `devops::ai clients`, `group::developer clients`, `category: duo cli`
VS Code extension	`section::ai`, `devops::ai clients`, `group::developer clients`, `category: vs code`
JetBrains plugin	`section::ai`, `devops::ai clients`, `group::developer clients`, `category: jetbrains`
Duo Client SDK / Language Server	`section::ai`, `devops::ai clients`, `group::duo client sdk`, `category: duo client sdk`
Duo Chat (UI and in-GitLab chat experiences)	`section::ai`, `devops::ai clients`, `group::duo chat`, `category: web chat`
Duo Chat (backend / chat-engine capability work)	`section::ai`, `devops::ai clients`, `group::duo chat`, `category: chat engine`
Duo Developer (end-to-end flow, Agent Foundations)	`section::ai`, `devops::agent foundations`, `group::agent developer`, `category: duo developer`
Flow Components (reusable flow / orchestration components)	`section::ai`, `devops::agent foundations`, `group::agent developer`, `category: flow components`

If a change genuinely spans multiple product areas, attach multiple category labels but keep the stage and group labels aligned to the primary owner.

Legacy Editor Extensions::* labels are not part of this taxonomy — don’t rely on them as ownership signals, and remove them from templates over time.

💬 Where to find us

Slack

We follow the GitLab Slack channel prefix conventions: s_ for the cross-team stage channel, f_ for functional-team channels.

Channel	Purpose
`#s_ai-clients-questions`	Public-facing AI Clients stage channel for questions and outreach
`#s_ai-clients`	Internal stage channel for team syncs only
`#s_ai-clients-social`	Stage social channel
`#f_duo_cli`	Duo CLI functional team
`#f_vscode_extension`	VS Code extension functional team
`#f_jetbrains_plugin`	JetBrains plugin functional team
`#f_duo-client-sdk`	Duo Client SDK functional team (renamed from `#f_language_server`)
`#duo-chat-lounge`	Duo Chat lounge

Shared Calendar

AI Clients Shared Calendar (Calendar ID: c_673d889354d021f7fa9f20a003b5867185a9bf12989b5eaacbc8b537cc9ef27c@group.calendar.google.com)

Product categories

Each AI Clients group owns product categories, documented on the product categories page:

Developer Clients group — Duo CLI, VS Code, JetBrains
Duo Chat group — Web Chat, Chat Engine
Duo Client SDK group — Duo Client SDK

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