Dec 29, 2025. 10 min

Secure and Intelligent Code Reviews for GitLab Cloud and Self-Managed


Introduction

Software teams leveraging GitLab, whether on GitLab.com or self-managed instances, can now streamline and automate high-quality code reviews with CloudAEye Code Review. This expansion brings CloudAEye’s advanced AI-driven review capabilities into the GitLab ecosystem, enabling faster delivery, stronger code hygiene, and deeper insights directly within merge requests.


Why This Matters?

Modern engineering organizations face relentless pressure to deliver reliable, secure, maintainable software at speed. CloudAEye Code Review automates critical aspects of the code review lifecycle catching defects early, identifying security issues, and providing actionable insights, so development teams can ship with confidence. This support for GitLab Cloud and Self-Managed setups aligns CloudAEye with the diverse needs of enterprise and on-premise deployments, ensuring teams don’t compromise on automation or quality regardless of where they host their source code.


Key Capabilities of CloudAEye Code Review

CloudAEye is not a traditional static analyzer. Its AI can understand entire codebases, dependencies, and architectural patterns, providing “human-like” review feedback that goes beyond surface-level checks. Core features include:


Intelligent Code Insights

  1. Security-first analysis: Built-in security assessment covers broad vulnerability classes including OWASP Top 10 for web and emerging stacks such as LLM, Agentic and MCP alongside quality and style issues.
  2. Full codebase awareness: Instead of evaluating diffs in isolation, CloudAEye models your entire codebase, enabling more accurate and relevant findings.
  3. Architect-level, stack-aware feedback: CloudAEye reviews code with full architectural and ecosystem context, identifying logic flaws, maintainability gaps, and systemic errors that diff-only tools miss. It understands your technical stack including CNCF technologies and widely used open-source software learning your frameworks, languages, infrastructure, and architectural conventions so every recommendation is tailored to your real implementation patterns, not generic best practices.

Developer Productivity Enhancements

  1. Code Quality and Fundamentals: CloudAEye Code Review enforces core engineering and security fundamentals to ensure reliable, maintainable, and safe code. It prevents secret leakage, duplicate logic, and runtime errors while improving readability, naming consistency, and error handling. The platform also validates inputs, handles edge cases, and protects against common security risks such as injection flaws, insecure deserialization, misconfigurations, and unauthorized access.
  2. Automated PR descriptions (/describe): CloudAEye can draft clear, context-aware descriptions for your merge requests.
    PR Description

  3. Suggested fixes (/implement): In addition to highlighting issues, CloudAEye provides actionable code fixes that reduce resolution time.
    Implement

  4. Test generation (/test) and documentation (/add_docs): Generate unit tests and documentation to improve coverage and maintainability as part of the review flow.
    Test Generation

    Example of /add_docs:
    Add Docs

  5. Q&A with your code (/ask): Developers can query the codebase with natural language questions to speed onboarding and debugging.
    Q&A

  6. Issue Explainer (/explain): Convert Jira, GitLab Issue Tracker or GitHub Issues into step-by-step implementation guidance, powered by your codebase context.
    Explain


GitLab Support Overview

CloudAEye's GitLab integration enables developers to run automated reviews directly within GitLab merge requests (MRs) for both GitLab Cloud and self-managed instances. It extends the native GitLab code review workflow with AI-powered insights, without disrupting the developer experience.


What's Supported?

  1. GitLab Cloud (GitLab.com): Seamless connectivity between CloudAEye and hosted GitLab repositories allows teams to trigger and view reviews within MRs.
  2. GitLab Self-Managed: CloudAEye supports on-premise GitLab installations, enabling retrospective and real-time automated reviews even where repositories are hosted behind corporate firewalls.
  3. Merge Request Triggers: Reviews can be initiated manually via commands (e.g., @cloudaeye /review) or configured to run automatically on selected branches and labels.


Setup Guide: GitLab Integration

To begin using CloudAEye Code Review with GitLab whether on cloud or self-managed infrastructure, follow the key configuration steps below.


1. Register and Access CloudAEye

Create a CloudAEye account if you have not already, and sign in to the CloudAEye SaaS platform.


2. Configure GitLab Integration

Within the CloudAEye dashboard:

  1. Navigate to Code Review > Integrations > GitLab.
  2. Provide necessary credentials and tokens (e.g., Service Account and Access Token) to authorize CloudAEye with your GitLab instance.
  3. For self-managed instances, enter your instance's base URL and ensure appropriate API scopes are granted.
  4. Map repositories that you want to enable for automated review.

3. Validate and Enable Repositories

After token and permissions are configured, select which projects should receive automated reviews. CloudAEye will confirm access and begin reflecting repository metadata.


4. Run Reviews

Once connected:

  1. Manual Trigger: Type a review command (e.g., @cloudaeye /review) in a merge request conversation to initiate a review.
    Code Review

  2. Automated Workflows: Optionally enable automatic triggering based on branch patterns, labels, or CI events so reviews run without manual intervention.

CloudAEye will post detailed review comments, segregated by category (quality, security, etc.) directly within GitLab's MR interface.


Differentiation: Why Choose CloudAEye?

CloudAEye distinguishes itself from other code review and analysis tools on several axes:

  1. Security Coverage for Modern Stack: The platform incorporates security checking for emerging paradigms like LLMs and agentic/MCP workflows, providing a broader attack surface understanding than traditional tools.
  2. Contextual Intelligence Beyond Diff Scope: Unlike linters or static analyzers that treat changes in isolation, CloudAEye builds a relational graph of the entire codebase, enabling insights grounded in actual system behavior.
  3. AI-Driven Suggestion and Remedy: CloudAEye does not just detect issues; it suggests fixes and generates relevant artifacts (tests, docs), reducing cognitive burden on dev teams.
  4. Custom Rules and Learning: Teams can tailor review standards in natural language, and the system learns from historical reviews to align with team conventions over time.
    Learning


Conclusion

With GitLab support across both cloud-hosted and self-managed environments, CloudAEye Code Review brings cutting-edge AI automation to teams looking to accelerate development velocity while maintaining high standards for quality and security. Whether you operate entirely in GitLab Cloud or on-premise, integrating CloudAEye into your developer workflows means fewer manual reviews, faster resolution cycles, and a clear path toward consistent engineering excellence.


References

  1. Use Code Review at CloudAEye
  2. Docs: Getting Started with Code Review on GitLab
  3. Video: Overview of Code Review

Nazrul Islam

A seasoned engineering executive, Nazrul has been building enterprise products and services for 20 years. Nazrul is the founder and CEO of CloudAEye. Previously, he was Sr. Dir and Head of CloudBees Core where he focused on enterprise version of Jenkins. Before that, he was Sr. Dir of Engineering, Oracle Cloud. Nazrul graduated from the executive MBA program with high distinction (top 10% of the cohort) at University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Nazrul is named inventor in 47 patents.