The GitLab Way: How We Scaled Autonomous Problem-Solving with MVC, Boring Solutions, and the GitLab CLI

When engineers think of GitLab, they usually think of a CI/CD powerhouse or an all-in-one DevOps platform. But behind GitLab’s 100% remote, thousands-strong engineering organization lies one of the most rigorously documented, efficient software engineering cultures on the planet: The GitLab Engineering Handbook .

At the heart of GitLab’s culture are principles like Minimum Viable Change (MVC) , "Choose Boring Solutions" , Single Source of Truth (SSOT) , and Asynchronous-First Communication .

If you're using modern AI coding agents (like Google DeepMind’s Antigravity, Claude Code, or Cursor) or leading an engineering squad, applying GitLab’s exact problem-solving culture eliminates common pitfalls: runaway refactoring, bloated pull requests, stalled code reviews, and broken CI pipelines.

Here is an end-to-end blueprint on how GitLab actually works, how to translate their guidelines into autonomous…