Duo Chat

What is Duo Chat?

Duo Chat is a conversational AI programming assistant launched by GitLab, a source code management platform. It aims to provide real-time guidance to both engineering and non-engineering users through natural language interaction. This AI programming tool supports the entire software development lifecycle, helping teams improve code comprehension speed, enhance collaboration capabilities, and quickly master the use of GitLab. Duo Chat can explain code, refactor code, generate tests, and provide code suggestions, thereby improving development efficiency and code quality. At the same time, it emphasizes privacy protection by not using customer data to train AI models and allowing organizations to control AI access to sensitive data. In addition to being part of the GitLab user interface, Duo Chat can also be integrated into popular IDEs such as VS Code and the JetBrains suite.

The main functions of Duo Chat

• Real-time Technical Guidance: GitLab Duo Chat provides instant technical support for both engineering and non-engineering team members, covering the entire software development lifecycle.
• Code Comprehension: Through natural language explanations, it helps developers quickly understand new code segments they encounter, reducing the learning curve.
• Code Quality Improvement: Offers intelligent code refactoring capabilities, enabling developers to optimize existing code for greater efficiency and modernization.
• Automated Testing: Automatically generates test code to help teams identify potential program errors in advance, improving software quality.
• Intelligent Code Suggestions: During coding, Duo Chat can predictively complete code blocks and recommend commonly used code patterns, enhancing coding efficiency.
• Code Generation: Automatically generates complete code lines or functions based on comments, simplifying the development process.
• Code Completion: Automatically completes new code lines based on just a few characters of user input, speeding up the development process.
• Multi-language and IDE Compatibility: Supports a variety of programming languages, such as C, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, etc., and seamlessly integrates with popular IDEs like VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDE suite, and Neovim.

Product Price of GitLab Duo Chat

For new users of GitLab, Duo Chat offers a free trial for 30 days. If you are an existing user, currently Duo Chat is available for GitLab Premium and Ultimate paid users, and you need to purchase the corresponding additional subscription to use the GitLab Duo Pro features.

• GitLab Duo Pro:
  ◦ Targeted at developers who wish to focus on innovation and deliver high-quality software.
  ◦ Priced at $19 per user per month, payable annually.
  ◦ This version includes features such as code explanation, code refactoring, and test generation.
• GitLab Duo Enterprise :
  ◦ For organizations that want to fully use AI throughout the software development lifecycle.
  ◦ Priced at USD 39 per user per month, which also requires annual payment.
  ◦ In addition to including all the features of GitLab Duo Pro, it will also include additional advanced features such as summary and template tools, security and vulnerability tools, advanced troubleshooting, etc.

The applicable population of Duo Chat

• Developers: Software developers who need to quickly understand new code, improve coding efficiency, refactor code, and generate test code.
• Non-technical team members: including project managers, product managers, designers, etc. They may need to understand how the code works but do not have in-depth technical backgrounds.
• DevOps professionals: Professionals responsible for software deployment, monitoring, and maintenance. They can use Duo Chat to optimize the CI/CD process and enhance the security of infrastructure code.
• Security experts: Experts focusing on software security can use Duo Chat’s vulnerability explanation and repair suggestion features to improve code security.
• Freelancers and independent developers: Independent software developers can use Duo Chat to improve personal work efficiency, especially when lacking team collaboration.
• Enterprise customers: Enterprises that aim to adopt AI technology throughout the software development lifecycle to improve development efficiency and software quality.
• GitLab users: Users who have already used GitLab for project management and code hosting can obtain richer features and a better user experience through Duo Chat.

Application scenarios of Duo Chat

• New Project Onboarding: Newly joined developers can quickly understand the project background, CI/CD processes, framework usage, and other foundational knowledge through Duo Chat.
• Code Writing and Suggestions: During the coding process, Duo Chat can provide code completion, generation, and suggestions to help developers improve coding efficiency.
• Automated Testing: Duo Chat can automatically generate test code, helping the team identify potential defects and errors earlier.
• Security Vulnerability Management: The security team can use Duo Chat’s vulnerability explanation and fix suggestion features to handle security issues more efficiently.
• Collaboration and Communication: Duo Chat supports real-time communication among team members, providing quick technical guidance and decision-making support.
• Documentation and Specification Writing: Developers can use Duo Chat to generate documentation, templates, and issue descriptions, standardizing the team’s documentation efforts.
• Review and Feedback: During the code review process, Duo Chat can assist in generating review summaries, facilitating more efficient communication between authors and reviewers.
• Project Management: Project managers can use Duo Chat to track project progress, generate status reports, and quickly obtain an overview of the project.