## Problem Statement **Teams waste CI/CD compute resources and developer time running unnecessary tests and checks on every pipeline execution because GitLab doesn't provide pipelines with context about what has changed since the last successful build.** ### Impact **For Developers:** * **Wasted time:** Every pipeline runs the full test suite even when only a small subset of code changed * **Slow feedback loops:** Developers wait for irrelevant tests (e.g., backend tests when only CSS changed) * **Context switching:** Longer pipeline times mean more interruptions and lost focus **For Organizations:** * **Compute waste:** Running full test suites on every commit burns CI minutes unnecessarily * **Cost inefficiency:** Especially painful for large monorepos where a one-line change triggers thousands of tests * **Scalability bottleneck:** As codebases grow, pipeline times become prohibitive without intelligent optimization ### Root Cause GitLab CI jobs currently have **no native way to know**: * What was the last commit that passed all checks? * What files/paths changed between now and that successful state? * Whether the current changes are relevant to this specific job's scope? This forces teams to either: 1. **Accept the waste** and run everything every time 2. **Build complex workarounds** using git commands, artifacts, and custom scripts that are brittle and hard to maintain 3. **Manually configure** `only:changes` rules that are static and don't account for actual success/failure history ### Desired Outcome **Pipelines should be able to intelligently scope their work based on what actually changed since the last known-good state**, enabling: * Conditional test execution (only lint changed files) * Smart job skipping (skip backend tests if only frontend changed) * Incremental builds and validations * Faster feedback with lower resource consumption ### Success Criteria When solved, teams should be able to: 1. Reference `$CI_LAST_SUCCESSFUL_COMMIT` (or similar) in their pipeline configuration 2. Use `git diff $CI_LAST_SUCCESSFUL_COMMIT` to determine changed files 3. Conditionally execute jobs based on actual changes since last success 4. Reduce pipeline execution time by 30-70% for typical incremental changes 5. Lower CI compute costs proportionally to skipped work <!--IssueSummary start--> <details> <summary> Everyone can contribute. [Help move this issue forward](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-relations/contributor-success/community-contributors-workflows/#contributor-links) while earning points, leveling up and collecting rewards. </summary> - [Close this issue](https://contributors.gitlab.com/manage-issue?action=close&projectId=278964&issueIid=14566) </details> <!--IssueSummary end-->