glab(1)

💫 glab-orbit-remote-query — aka the glab orbit remote query page from your glab(1) manual 💫

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because this one is experimental and we're gonna talk about it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

glab-orbit-remote-query — Execute a GitLab Knowledge Graph query. (EXPERIMENTAL)

Not me putting the all-caps EXPERIMENTAL in bold, but like, it's giving important, so. 🙈

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

glab orbit remote query [file|-] [flags]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So what this does is call POST /api/v4/orbit/query with a JSON request body, and then it prints the server response verbatim. That's it. That's the whole vibe. No remixing, no glow-up, the bytes come out exactly how they went in. ✨

The body gets read from a file path, or from standard input when the argument is - or just... omitted entirely. Queen of flexibility.

The request body has to be a full Orbit query envelope, like:

{
  "query": { "query_type": "...", ... },
  "response_format": "llm" | "raw"
}

--response-format overrides the body's response_format value, or sets it if it's absent. And if neither the body nor --response-format specifies a format? Then llm is used by default, periodt. Here's the tea on the two formats:

• llm is compact GOON/TOON text — it's literally intended for agents 🤖
• raw returns structured JSON, which is the one you want if you're piping into jq

The server's response body gets written to stdout verbatim regardless of format — no client-side decoding or re-encoding is performed. Like, zero. None. The client is not touching it. 💅

Compatibility note, bestie, listen up: prior to this change, --format raw output was re-marshalled through the SDK's typed OrbitQueryResult struct (producing indented JSON). It is now the server's bytes verbatim (compact JSON). So if you're out here needing indented output, pipe into jq . — that's the move. 😭

The graph DSL JSON Schema is served by glab orbit remote tools and it is the source of truth for the body shape. 👑 And see also glab orbit remote schema for the graph ontology.

For the full query language reference with examples, go fetch the docs from the Knowledge Graph repository:

glab api "projects/gitlab-org%2Forbit%2Fknowledge-graph/repository/files/docs%2Fsource%2Fqueries%2Fquery_language.md?ref=main" | jq -r .content | base64 -d

⚠️ This feature is an experiment and is not ready for production use. It might be unstable or removed at any time. For more information, see https://docs.gitlab.com/policy/development_stages_support/. 💀

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• --hostname="" — GitLab hostname to query. Defaults to the current repository's host or gitlab.com.
• --response-format="llm" — Server response format: llm (compact GOON/TOON for agents) or raw (structured JSON).

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🌈 OPTIONS INHERITED FROM PARENT COMMANDS 🌈

• -h, --help[=false] — Show help for this command.

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💖 EXAMPLE 💖

# Run a query from a file
$ glab orbit remote query ./query.json

# Run a query from stdin
$ cat ./query.json | glab orbit remote query -

# Force raw output (pipeable into jq)
$ glab orbit remote query --response-format raw ./query.json

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• glab-orbit-remote(1)

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Auto generated by spf13/cobra, dated Aug 2026, and living in the glab(1) manual — okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate that read, now go query something 🔥💜