Backport the 2026-10-23 Orbit changes to 19.5

What does this MR do and why?

Daily backport of the GitLab Orbit changes that merged to master and are not on 19-5-stable-ee yet. Each MR is one git cherry-pick -m 1 -x with the same added and removed lines as the original MR. There were no conflicts and no adaptations. The branch is squashed into one commit.

#	MR	Change	Author	Merged	Type
1	Load every CommitStatus type for Orbit ci_build... (!264103 - merged)	Load every CommitStatus type for Orbit ci_build redaction	michaelangeloio	2026-10-22 03:35 UTC	typebug
2	Remove inert compatConfig MODE 3 from Orbit (!264186 - merged)	Remove inert compatConfig MODE 3 from Orbit	mrincon	2026-10-22 10:54 UTC	typemaintenance
3	Align Orbit UI spacing, radius, Quickstart, and... (!264460 - merged)	Align Orbit UI spacing, radius, Quickstart, and query editor actions	jgdoyon1	2026-10-23 01:20 UTC	typebug
4	Give Orbit access to groups with a sales-assist... (!264666 - merged)	Give Orbit access to groups with a sales-assisted trial	jgdoyon1	2026-10-23 17:23 UTC	typebug
5	Add Orbit internal endpoint for the instance id... (!264495 - merged)	Add Orbit internal endpoint for the instance identity and settings	jgdoyon1	2026-10-23 17:37 UTC	typemaintenance
6	Use the Duo default group as Orbit billing grou... (!264685 - merged)	Use the Duo default group as Orbit billing group for team members	jgdoyon1	2026-10-23 17:38 UTC	typefeature
7	Let ai_workflows tokens read Orbit status and s... (!264673 - merged)	Let ai_workflows tokens read Orbit status and schema in GraphQL	michaelangeloio	2026-10-23 20:13 UTC	typefeature

This MR replaces !264492 (closed), the single backport of !264460 (merged), now closed.

How the MRs were selected

• Sweep of all into 'master' merges since the 19.5 base (2026-10-12 13:08 UTC): label group::context-systems, Orbit authors, and files or diff lines that match orbit|knowledge_graph.
• Kept: Orbit code, and shared code that Orbit cannot work without.
• Already on 19-5-stable-ee: the GA backport !263724 (merged), and the single backports !264270 (merged) (!262223 (merged)), !264269 (merged) (!256404 (merged)), !262739 (merged) (!262112 (merged)), !263383 (merged) (!262140 (merged)), !262751 (merged) (!262513 (merged)).
• Endpoints get their own backport MR: !264100 (merged) and !264616 (merged) (Orbit context endpoint) are in the stacked MR !264806 (merged) on top of this MR.
• Not needed:
  • !263533 (merged) changes only the tool_status in the MCP log. The response to the agent is the same. It needs MCP governance and dispatch code that the stable branches do not have.
  • !259938 (merged) is Duo Workflow setup behind the duo_developer_orbit flag, for a GitLab.com rollout.
  • !263723 (merged) (MCP toolset in _meta, not Orbit), !262861 (merged) (Caproni dev config), !264105 (merged) (CODEOWNERS).

Verification

• git patch-id --stable of each pick is the same as the one of the original merge commit.
• Local, on the 19-5-stable-ee dependencies: RSpec, Jest, ESLint, and RuboCop on the changed files (results in a comment).
• MR pipeline at pipeline::tier-3.

Points for reviewers:

• The types are mixed. The MR has type::maintenance for the stable_branch.rb Danger rule, as the GA backports had. It needs a release manager exception (ask in #releases).
• No migrations, no generated files, no new feature flags. !264495 (merged) adds an internal endpoint (GET /api/v4/internal/orbit/instance) for the Orbit service, so it is in this MR.
• !264186 (merged) is picked before !264460 (merged), so !264460 (merged) applies without the compatConfig conflict that its single backport had.

MR acceptance checklist

This checklist encourages us to confirm any changes have been analyzed to reduce risks in quality, performance, reliability, security, and maintainability.

• This MR is backporting a bug fix, documentation update, or spec fix, previously merged in the default branch. (Release manager exception requested.)
• The MR that fixed the bug on the default branch has been deployed to GitLab.com (not applicable for documentation or spec changes).
• The MR title is descriptive (e.g. "Backport of 'title of default branch MR'"). This is important, since the title will be copied to the patch blog post.
• Required labels have been applied to this merge request
  • severity label and bug subtype labels (if applicable)
  • If this MR fixes a bug that affects customers, the customer label has been applied.
• This MR has been approved by a maintainer (only one approval is required).
• Ensure the E2E Omnibus GitLab EE pipeline (triggered by thee2e:test-on-omnibus-ee job) has succeeded. If it has failed (or shows warnings), investigate the failures. If you determine the failures are unrelated, you may proceed. If you need assistance investigating, request help in the #s_developer_experience Slack channel to confirm the failures are unrelated to the merge request.

Note to the merge request author and maintainer

If you have questions about the patch release process, please:

• Refer to the patch release runbook for engineers and maintainers for guidance.
• Ask questions on the #releases Slack channel (internal only).
• Once the backport has been merged, the commit changes will be automatically deployed to a release environment that can be used for manual validation. See after merging runbook for details.