The Buildkite VS Code extension is now available, bringing your pipelines and agents directly into your editor. You can browse and manage pipelines, view agent status, stream job logs, get build notifications, and validate pipeline YAML — all without leaving VS Code. Install it from the VS Code Marketplace. Full docs are at buildkite.com/docs/platform/vscode-extension.
A few things have shipped in the Buildkite MCP Server since list_tests arrived in August. Read the steps a dynamic pipeline uploaded You can now ask your agent what actually ran in a dynamic pipeline. list_step_uploads returns a build's uploads, most recent first, with the state of each one, the job that sent it, and the reason for any rejection. get_step_upload returns a single upload's pipeline…
Job logs are now limited to 1 GiB (1,024 MiB) by default. You can check your organization’s current log size limit on the Quotas page. When a job log exceeds the limit, Buildkite cancels the job and adds a Log Size Limit Exceeded event to the timeline. Logs received prior to the limit being reached are retained. If you need to produce output greater than 1GiB, consider a build artifact. See the ma…
To improve GitHub Actions migration support, the Buildkite GitHub App now requests read-only access to Actions, Variables, and Environments. These permissions let Buildkite inspect configuration that affects how workflows and deployments run—including configuration variables referenced through ${{ vars.* }}, secret names (not secret values), deployment protection rules, and deployment branch polic…
Buildkite Agent v4 is here. It's the first major version of the agent since v3 arrived in 2018, and it's now the stable release: installations and upgrades that follow the latest or stable channels now receive v4. v4 clears out functionality deprecated over those eight years and makes current, supported behaviour the default, giving the agent a cleaner baseline for what we build next. New capabili…
You can now connect to running Linux hosted jobs over SSH from your terminal using the Buildkite CLI. This extends the existing bk job ssh command for macOS hosted jobs to Linux hosted agents. Install Buildkite CLI version 3.55.1 or later, then run: bk job ssh <job-uuid> The command opens an interactive shell and forwards terminal size and resize events. Before connecting, configure the Buildkite…
Stack-managed ephemeral agents can now start with a credential for one job. The controller keeps its cluster agent token and issues a short-lived job acquisition token (JAT) after reserving work. The workload uses that JAT to register an agent and acquire only the named job. A JAT expires fifteen minutes after issuance by default. The Stacks API accepts a lifetime of up to one hour, but the token…
Agent names containing %n now receive a random six-character alphanumeric suffix instead of the next available number. For example, cool-agent-%n, which previously produced a name such as cool-agent-123, now produces a name such as cool-agent-aB3dE6. We deprecated %n in 2022 because allocating sequential agent names becomes increasingly expensive as organizations scale. Removing the sequential all…
Block and input steps that need your attention now appear in their own Waiting for input group when grouped by state on the build page. This separates them from steps waiting on dependencies, which remain under Waiting, so it's easier to spot where a build needs action. You can also now filter by Waiting for input in any build page view.
The new Test Engine Build tests API returns the tests that ran in a specific Buildkite Pipelines build. Each test includes its reliability, average, total, minimum, and maximum duration, execution count, and counts by result for the build. You can filter by branch, labels, owners, state, or execution tags, sort by reliability or duration, and paginate through the results. The Buildkite MCP Server…
Buildkite's audit log search was previously limited to type:, so answering "what happened to this pipeline?" or "what did this person change?" meant paging through everything else that happened in the last 90 days. We've added three more terms to help you find exactly what you're looking for. pipeline: returns the events a pipeline is the subject of, by slug or UUID (for example, pipeline:my-app).…
To expand GitHub Actions workflow support, the Buildkite GitHub App now requests read and write access to Issues, Packages, Attestations, and Artifact metadata. These permissions allow compatible workflows to respond to issue activity, publish GitHub Packages, and create artifact attestations and metadata. Existing installations will be prompted in GitHub to approve them.
Buildkite's GitHub Actions OSS plugin is in public preview. You run your compatible GitHub Actions workflows in Buildkite unchanged, evaluate as you go, and move to a full Buildkite pipeline when you're ready. This release adds reusable workflows, Docker-based actions, and service containers. Reusable workflows You can now call reusable workflows directly, whether they live in a public repo or a .…
We've added desktop access for jobs running on macOS hosted agents. Expand a running step and you'll find a new Open Desktop button next to the job's existing Open Terminal button. The desktop opens in a browser tab, so there's no local port forwarding, VPN, or client software to set up. We've made it scale to fit the tab and resize with the window. Mouse and keyboard input are sent straight to th…
When a build has finished but its status hasn't appeared on a pull request, it can be difficult to tell whether CI is still processing or GitHub is temporarily unable to accept the update. Buildkite now surfaces GitHub API rate-limit exhaustion directly in the UI, giving you clear visibility into what's delaying status updates and when normal delivery should resume. What we're doing We've added an…
Buildkite is a launch partner for Origin, Cursor's new git forge for agentic scale. It ships in the Origin Marketplace today, bringing fast, reliable CI to codebases hosted there. More choice in code hosting is good for developers. And your CI platform shouldn't depend on your git forge. That’s what makes Buildkite different. It works across GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and now Origin. With Buildkit…
The Buildkite MCP Server now includes list_tests, a read-only tool that gives AI agents a suite-wide view of your Test Engine tests and their execution metrics. Agents can sort tests by reliability or average, total, minimum, or maximum duration to quickly identify flaky and slow tests. They can narrow the results by time window, branch, labels, owners, state, or tags, and paginate through large t…
The Test Engine List tests API now returns aggregated reliability, duration, and execution metrics for each test. You can use these metrics to identify your flakiest or slowest tests. The endpoint also supports: Filtering by branch, labels, owners, state, and tags Selecting a relative period or an explicit timestamp range Sorting by reliability or average, total, minimum, or maximum duration Pagin…
You can now configure how the Buildkite agent checks out your source code using a new checkout block in your pipeline YAML. Skip checkout entirely, perform shallow clones, set custom Git flags, and more - all from within your pipeline definition. For example: checkout: submodules: false steps: - label: "Fast build" command: "make build" checkout: depth: 50 sparse: paths: - src/ - .buildkite/ - lab…
A long-running job can know it will exit non-zero before its command is complete. Until now, the build stayed running until that job finished, delaying notifications, investigation, and remediation. With promise job failure, the job can declare its expected exit status early. Buildkite applies retry and soft-fail rules, then marks the build failing if the promise represents a hard failure. The job…
To make headless CI practical for AI agents and infrastructure tools, Buildkite now exposes more setup, governance, and troubleshooting operations through REST and GraphQL. The new coverage spans pipeline creation, organization administration, notification services, hosted agent resources, and artifacts. It also includes the previously announced REST infrastructure-failure diagnosis improvements,…
Buildkite Agent v3.135.0 can now send job logs to your OpenTelemetry collector. This brings CI output into the same observability backend as your application and infrastructure telemetry, making it easier to investigate slow or failing jobs without switching between tools. When OpenTelemetry tracing is also enabled, each record is correlated with the job, phase, or hook span that produced it. In b…
Agents no longer need to hand-roll a polling loop over get_build to find out how a build went. The Buildkite MCP Server now includes wait_for_build, a tool that waits for a build to reach a terminal state and reports the outcome. Each call waits up to 45 seconds. If the build settles in that window, the tool returns the final build details along with the state it reached: passed, failed, canceled,…
The Model Context Protocol has gone stateless—and Buildkite is ready. The Buildkite MCP Server is now compliant with the MCP 2026-07-28 specification across both the open-source server and the Remote MCP Server. The headline change transforms MCP from a bidirectional, stateful protocol into a stateless request-response protocol. This was one of the most highly requested improvements from MCP devel…
The OpenTelemetry Notification Service now has a Request Log panel that is available in preview. This gives you more visibility into your trace exports and helps you diagnose connectivity, authentication, and endpoint configuration issues. The panel shows the last 20 outbound trace export requests. Each row shows the request UUID and exported span name (for example, buildkite.job or buildkite.step…
On 1 September 2026 (AEST), Buildkite Agent v4 becomes the stable release. From that date, installations and upgrades that follow the latest or stable release channels will use v4. We expect most customers to be unaffected. v4 retires functionality that has been deprecated for years and makes current, supported behaviour the default, giving the agent a cleaner baseline for what we build next. New…
Debugging a failed build shouldn't start with a scavenger hunt. The Buildkite MCP Server now includes get_build_failure_summary, a new tool designed around Anthropic's best practices for writing tools for agents. It turns a common multi-step workflow into one purpose-built call, taking an agent from “the build failed” to a likely cause. The tool brings together the build state, failed and broken j…
The Elastic CI Stack for AWS now supports Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as an alternative to Amazon Linux 2023 for Linux agents. Ubuntu images are available for both x86-64 and ARM64 instances. Ubuntu can be selected with either supported deployment method: For CloudFormation, set the LinuxDistribution parameter to ubuntu2404 in Elastic CI Stack for AWS v6.70.0. For Terraform, set linux_distribution = "ubuntu2…
The Buildkite MCP Server can now discover and load on-demand usage guides, and log searching is more efficient and reliable. Discoverable skill guides for agents Agents can now discover and load usage guides on demand, instead of relying solely on tool descriptions or the server's static instructions. Guides can be searched by keyword and loaded in full when needed, making it easier for an agent t…
Teams using GitLab.com or GitLab Self-Managed can now build merge requests and test proposed merges against their target branches with merged-results builds. Merge request builds test the source branch, while merged-results builds test the proposed merge, helping catch integration failures before merging. Set up merge request builds In your pipeline's GitLab settings: Enable Build merge requests t…