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title: "Category Direction - Snippets"
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## Snippets

 | |
| --- | --- |
| Stage | [Create](/direction/dev/#create) |
| Maturity | [Minimal](/direction/maturity/) |
| Content Last Reviewed | `2020-03-16` |

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special considerations for your strategy or how you plan to prioritize, the
description is a great place to include it. Please include usecases, personas,
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### Introduction and how you can help

Thanks for visiting this direction page on Snippets in GitLab. This page belongs to the [Editor](/handbook/product/categories/#editor-group) group of the Create stage and is maintained by Kai Armstrong ([E-Mail](mailto:karmstrong@gitlab.com)).

This direction is a work in progress, and everyone can contribute:

 - Please comment and contribute in the linked [issues](hhttps://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name[]=Category%3ASnippets) and [epics](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics?label_name%5B%5D=Category%3ASnippets) on this page. Sharing your feedback directly on GitLab.com or submitting a Merge Request to this page are the best ways to contribute to our direction.
 - Please share feedback directly via email, Twitter, or on a video call. If you're a GitLab user and have direct knowledge of your need for snippets, we'd especially love to hear from you.

### Overview

[GitLab Snippets](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/snippets.html) allow users to share small bits of code and text by directly linking, downloading, or embedding them in web apps within a `<script>` HTML tag.

Commonly Snippets are often used for smaller pieces of code that are [reused](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/14340#note_210492499) among several projects, additional [documentation](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/38068#note_261442816) for specific one-off scripts/functions and [instructions](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/38068#note_255843645) for using the main project.

We want to make snippets a more valuable tool in the engineering toolkit by first making each snippet behave more like a lightweight Git repository including support for multiple files. Once we've done that we'll work on improving and adding more sharing capabilities and adding the ability to execute snippets within GitLab.

### Target Audience and Experience
<!-- An overview of the personas involved in this category. An overview
of the evolving user journeys as the category progresses through minimal,
viable, complete and lovable maturity levels.-->

Snippets are primarily targeted at **engineering personas** who are looking for ways to document and share information with other users. GitLab personas that represent this are:
 - [Sasha (Software Developer)](/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas/#sasha-software-developer)
 - [Devon (DevOps Engineer)](/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas/#devon-devops-engineer)
 - [Sidney (Systems Administrator)](/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas/#sidney-systems-administrator)

#### Challenges to address

There are two themes of challenges that need to be kept in mind when evaluating the Snippets direction.

1. There are existing technical challenges with GitLab's model for repositories and future directional items where compute may be required have also proved [historically problematic](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/167#note_185701219). Scoping the required outcomes here will be important to successfully enable this functionality.

1. Users of snippets have strong mental models of expected functionality based on existing competitors in the market. As new features are added to GitLab snippets to further running code or creating simple prototypes it will be important to gain feature parity and then build on top of that to increase adoption of the product.

### Where we are headed

We want GitLab to be the first choice for developers looking to share or demo small samples and prototypes with other users either within their team on GitLab or externally via links and embeds. Adding the ability to version control snippets and support multiple files will be important as we continue to expand capabilities.

Once snippets behave like other `git` based projects we want to enhance sharing and interactive capabilities of snippets. We're aiming to support the ability to [run simple scipts](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/2397) (e.g. python, ruby, shell) and support [html/css/js and javascript](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/2398) framework based demos.

We also want snippets to follow standard [embed](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1496) capabilities so they can be used outside of GitLab easily. These enhancements will help to further make snippets a valuable tool for sharing knowledge across the ecosystem.

#### What's Next & Why
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priorities for a few stakeholders. This section must provide a link to an issue
or [epic](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/product-management/process/#epics-for-a-single-iteration) for the MVC or first/next iteration in
the category.-->

**In Progress: [Version controlled snippets](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/239)** - Snippets should be built on top of a Git repository so that they can be versioned. Versioning is one of the top 10 requested issues within all of GitLab.

**Next: [Snippets with multiple files](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/2829)** - Snippets sometimes need more than one file to properly convey value. Adding support for multiple files brings us closer to parity with the market and supports users as one of the top 10 requested features for GitLab.

<!-- #### What is Not Planned Right Now -->

#### Maturity Plan

Currently, GitLab's maturity in Snippets is *minimal*. Here's why:

 - GitLab currently does not support multiple files or versioning. Without these features Snippets cannot reasonably replace alternatives like GitHub Gists or BitBucket Snippets.

**Viability** for this category would be achieved by enabling either multiple file support *or* versioning. Given the [proposed plan](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/239) would add support for both of these simultaneously,  Snippets would go directly to complete.

A **complete** snippets category would allow users to utilize snippets in way that aligns with other `git` functionality. Such as allowing multiple files to be shared (e.g. a mix of Javascript, CSS, HTML) or forked (e.g. I can make a copy of something interesting I see), or remixed (e.g. I can take a cool snippet and tweak it for my own use). GitLab has solved for `movingtogitlab` and supports the needs of those users looking for alternatives.

**Lovable** snippets come when we've graduated beyond a scratchpad and sharing and into a tool with interactive abilities to share and collaborate on snippets.

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- What specific user behaviors are indicate that users are trying these features, and solving their problems?
- How will users discover these features?
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<!-- ### Why is this important? -->
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- Why is GitLab building this feature?
- What impact will it have on the broader devops workflow?
- How confident are we? What is the effort?
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### Competitive Landscape
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work on to displace the competitor at customers, ideally discovered through
[customer meetings](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/product-management/process/#customer-meetings). We’re not aiming for feature parity
with competitors, and we’re not just looking at the features competitors talk
about, but we’re talking with customers about what they actually use, and
ultimately what they need.-->

Snippets capabilities are currently most close to [Pastebin](https://pastebin.com).

The primary competitor is Gists which is a no frills way to share snippets of code that are version controlled with Git. They allow multiple files to be shared (e.g. a mix of Javascript, CSS, HTML), forked (e.g. I can make a copy of something interesting I see), and remixed (e.g. I can take a cool snippet and tweak it for my own use). By being a Git repository, they are familiar to Git users and can be used in a variety of interesting ways from the command line.

A range of clever tools have since been built on top of Gists including:

- [Blocks](https://bl.ocks.org/)
- [Gist.io](http://gist.io/)

Atlassian has [Bitbucket Snippets](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/snippets-719095082.html) which is very similar to Gists, supporting Git and Mercurial.

If Snippets were combined with the Web IDE with client-side and server-side evaluation it would also compete with:

- Javascript sandboxes: [Codesandbox](https://codesandbox.io), [JSBin](https://jsbin.com), [JSFiddle](https://jsfiddle.net), [Codepen](https://codepen.io)
- Server-side sandboxes: [Codesandbox](https://codesandbox.io), [repl.it](https://repl.it)

### Analyst Landscape
<!-- What analysts and/or thought leaders in the space talking about, what are one or two issues
that will help us stay relevant from their perspective.-->

Snippets and pastebins are not currently an area of analyst interest.

### Top Customer Success/Sales issue(s)
<!-- These can be sourced from the CS/Sales top issue labels when available, internal
surveys, or from your conversations with them.-->

- [Version controlled snippets](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/239) are important to enterprise customers because they provide an audit trail of changes. The current state of snippets means they are completely uncontrolled.

### Top user issue(s)
<!-- This is probably the top popular issue from the category (i.e. the one with the most
thumbs-up), but you may have a different item coming out of customer calls.-->

Snippets in their current form lack feature parity with Github's Gists or Bitbucket's Snippets with both supporting multiple files and the former also supporting forks. The following two features are some of the most requested, particularly by users movingtogitlab:

- [Snippets with multiple files](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/14844) (solved by version controlled snippets)
- [Version controlled snippets](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/239)

### Top internal customer issue(s)
<!-- These are sourced from internal customers wanting to [dogfood](/handbook/values/#dogfooding)
the product.-->

Snippets are not used regularly internally, but we are working to change this in accordance to our [dogfood everything](/handbook/values/#dogfooding) approach.

### Top Strategy Item(s)
<!-- What's the most important thing to move your vision forward?-->

- [Version controlled snippets](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/239). Moving to Git backed snippets allows us to support version control and multiple files.