Navigation change proposal: Sidebar navigation link for Ai Agents

Background

What is this feature?

AI agents: “Build your own Duo Chat”

AI Agents is a new feature being developed to enabled users to manage their own agents, chatbots and prompts. The main JTBD are as follow:

  • I want to enrich my product offering with an LLM that is unique to a specific task

    • As a business, we intend to leverage GenAI-powered features in our product portfolio to better address our user goals
    • As a product development team responsible for creating GenAI-powered features, we need ways of understanding the impact of changes on our agents, so that we can evolve in the right direction

  • I want to automate a workflow

    • As a product development team responsible for creating GenAI-powered features, we wish to minimize effort spent on maintaining infrastructure to focus on delivering user facing value

Who is it for?

Anyone that wants to build chats. The primary personas we're targeting are:

  • Developer
  • Product Manager – allows no-code management of prompts

When will they use it?

Not sure yet – it’s not quite deployment, but you are “deploying” an agent. Users will also have actions for creating and managing an agent.

How does it connect to other workflows in GitLab?

This is a completely new concept

Proposal

Add AI Agents nav menu under Deploy, right next to Model Registry as these kind of go together. We expect that first user click would show people reaching for Deploy for this feature.

Other locations that were considered

This feature in itself is an entry point for others, ungroupable to anything we have in the product. There is nowhere in the product that has the concept of 'Prompts' for example.

  • Add AI agents under Manage – but this is an odd fit, as Manage mostly focused on the Project itself
  • Add a new top-level nav item for AI/ML features – we have lots of AI related features being built right now. Not sure what the verb should be though.
  • Add new top-level nav item for GitLab Labs page that shows all experimental features. This would be beneficial for both the incubation team, and any GitLab team that is working on experimental concepts.

Checklist

  • Review the handbook page for navigation.
  • Add relevant information to the issue description detailing your proposal, including usage and business drivers.
  • [-] List at least two other places you considered to introduce your feature.
  • [-] Add relevant designs to the Design Management area of the issue.
  • Ensure your UI suggestion align with the Documentation Style Guide.
  • Engage Technical Writing. They can help craft a term that best describes the feature(s) you’re proposing.
  • [-] Follow the product development workflow validation process to ensure you are solving a well understood problem and that the proposed change is understandable and non-disruptive to users. Navigation-specific research is mandatory for additions or when restructuring.
  • Engage the Foundations Product Manager for approval. The Foundations DRI (@jtucker_gl) will work with UX partners in product design, research, and technical writing, as applicable.
  • Consider whether you need to communicate the change somehow, or if you will have an interim period in the UI where your item will live in more than one place.
  • Ensure engineers are familiar with the implementation steps for navigation.

Example on how it was approached on model registry: Navigation Change proposal: Add entry for Model... (#428460 - closed)

Edited by Jeff Tucker