AI-assisted CI/CD pipeline editing experience (efficiency, best practices)

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Release notes

Problem to solve

Pipeline editing is hard. The pipeline editor added better visual writing for YAML, auto-linting with live feedback, and the possibility to see the merged objects tree when using inheritance and templates. The building blocks get more complex - selecting CI/CD templates is not possible yet, and other building blocks are missing, too.

Proposal

Improve the pipeline authoring experience in the UI, and use AI to propose more efficient building blocks.

1. Provide a visual pipeline builder with blocks (similar to draw.io, Visio) that allow to define inputs (CI/CD variables) and outputs (logs, artifacts, packages)
2. Use AI-assisted guided workflows that generate a proposed layout based on the project's structure
3. Integrate CI/CD components
4. Apply efficiency best practices automatically (caching, optimized container images, container building, matrix parallel builds, templates, etc.)
5. Include root cause analysis methods for identifying pipeline problems from their design (AI knowledge) without the need to run the pipelines.
6. Identify gaps in the CI/CD configuration, and suggest known best practices - i.e. additional security scanners, optimized Kubernetes deployments, or Observability instrumentation/profiling metrics.

Optional, non-blocking, but sharing same ideas

1. AI-assisted Auto DevOps in #427727
2. Integrate CI Steps when available

The idea came up in a session about AI in the DevOps lifecycle, which I hosted at DevOps Camp Nuremberg. More context in the DevRel event results slide deck (internal).

Intended users

• Sasha (Software Developer)
• Priyanka (Platform Engineer)
• Sidney (Systems Administrator)
• Simone (Software Engineer in Test)

Feature Usage Metrics

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