FileConcat

GitLab import

Paste a public GitLab repository URL into the import panel and press Fetch, and FileConcat fetches the project tree.

Supported URL shapes

The GitLab adapter at packages/core/src/sources/adapters/gitlab.ts matches gitlab.com URLs only. Self-hosted GitLab instances are not recognised.

https://gitlab.com/owner/repo
https://gitlab.com/group/subgroup/project
https://gitlab.com/owner/repo/-/tree/branch
https://gitlab.com/owner/repo/-/tree/branch/subdirectory

GitLab supports nested groups, which means the "owner" segment can itself be a path of group and subgroup names. The adapter handles up to any depth of nesting before the -/tree/... marker. A trailing .git is tolerated and stripped.

When a branch is omitted, the project's default branch is read from the project API. If that lookup fails the adapter falls back to main rather than giving up, so a project whose default branch is master and whose metadata request was rate limited reports a missing branch rather than a rate limit. Put the branch in the URL to skip the lookup entirely.

When a subdirectory is included, only files at or under that path are imported.

A branch name containing a slash does not work. The branch segment after -/tree/ stops at the first slash, so -/tree/release/2.0 is read as the branch release with the subdirectory 2.0. Import the default branch instead. Bitbucket import is the one source here that handles slashed branch names.

What one import costs in API requests

Every part of a GitLab import goes through gitlab.com/api/v4, including the file contents. That is the difference from GitHub import, where only the tree is an API call.

  • One request for the project's default branch, skipped when the branch is in the URL.
  • The tree is paginated at 100 entries per page, so a project with 2,400 entries costs 24 listing requests before a single file is downloaded. The panel counts files as it walks so a deep tree does not look frozen.
  • One request per file, twelve at a time.

GitLab.com documents 500 requests each minute for unauthenticated traffic from an IP address, and the same 500 each minute for repository files (GitLab, GitLab.com settings, read September 2026). That is a per-minute ceiling rather than a small hourly total, so what limits a large project here is how fast the requests go out, not how many files it has.

When a request is denied, the import panel surfaces a message produced by classifyResponseError (packages/core/src/sources/adapters/_errors.ts); status 401, 403 and 429 each carry distinct wording. A 429 whose Retry-After hint fits inside 30 seconds is retried once automatically.

A file that fails to download does not fail the import. The failure is recorded with its path and reason and the rest of the bundle is assembled without it, so check the file count in the result against what you expected.

Public repositories work without authentication. Private repositories are not accessible at the time of writing; token-authenticated imports are tracked as separate work.

Snippets

GitLab Snippets do not go to the GitLab adapter. They go to the Gist adapter, which handles both GitHub Gists and GitLab Snippets behind one URL shape group. Recognised forms:

https://gitlab.com/snippets/12345
https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/12345
https://gitlab.com/owner/snippets/12345
https://gitlab.com/owner/-/snippets/12345

Paste a Snippet URL into the import panel and FileConcat routes it automatically.

See also