Before you start

Mate is a GitLab-native agent orchestrator: you assign an issue or open an MR, and Mate spawns an LLM-driven agent that reads the context, takes action in GitLab (comments, branches, MRs), and reports back — all from a dedicated bot account you control.

Mate is currently in closed beta. Signups past the capacity cap land on a waitlist and are admitted manually. If you do not have an invitation, complete the signup flow on platform.mate.engineer; you will be placed in the FIFO queue and emailed when a slot opens.

What you need

Before you begin, have the following ready:

• A GitLab project where you hold at least Maintainer or Owner access. The webhook and bot-user access are set at the project level.
• A dedicated GitLab account for the bot user. This account acts as Mate in GitLab: every comment, branch, and MR the agent creates will appear to come from it. Do not use your personal account. The account needs Maintainer access on the target project.
• A GitLab Personal Access Token (PAT) for the bot account with the api scope. You will paste this into Mate during onboarding; Mate encrypts it immediately and you cannot retrieve it later.
• An LLM API key. Mate is BYOK (bring your own key). Supported providers:
  • OpenRouter — gives access to many models through one key.
  • Anthropic direct — use if you have a direct Anthropic account.

Note

Mate-managed credit (no separate LLM key required) is planned but not yet available. It will appear after general availability.

Walkthrough overview

This walkthrough has seven pages:

1. Before you start (this page)
2. Sign in and create a tenant
3. Connect GitLab
4. Create your first agent
5. LLM credentials
6. Register a webhook
7. Run your first job

Work through the pages in order. The onboarding wizard in the console mirrors this sequence.

Next: Sign in and create a tenant