Move issue discussion AI summary into Duo Chat

Proposal

Based on expected interaction moving discussion summary into Duo Chat will be beneficial. This will also align with overall direction for AI and make this feature more portable, meaning users could request any summary from anywhere in GitLab and view that output in the persistent chat log outside of the related issue. This should also avoid the current disjointed experience where users can request a summary in Duo Chat and get a different output than the in-page widget.

To help make this determination I used the template originally noted <em data-sourcepos="5:73-5:78">here</em>, and conducted a lightweight audit whose results can be found here, but which largely mirror the findings below.

• Customer problem to be solved
  • Issues often represent work relevant to a team, with multiple participants involved and discussion over the course of defining and implementing the issue. Users reviewing an issue with many comments/threads need to understand what was discussed in order to get the full context of the issue and any decisions that have been made. Today this means reading each thread, which can be time consuming when there are many comments.
• Can LLMs help solve the problem?
  • Does the problem require the processing of unstructured text data?
    • Yes
  • What is the benefit of such a solution? (typically efficiency)
    • Efficiency in working collaboratively on issues
  • What personas would this enable that wouldn’t be able to access this feature otherwise? N/a
  • What would change in the workflow if this feature is included in GitLab Duo Chat? No change to GitLab workflow; user workflow could shift from manual reading to summarizing first and then deciding if/what to read further.
• Does the problem lend itself to a chat?
  • Is the problem related to one of these three problem spaces: learning, creation, or ideation? Learning
  • Is the workflow centered around one user that needs to do something? If, no then chat is probably not a solution
    • One user at a time (not a collaborative process to use summary) but could be relevant to >1.
  • Is it possible that the AI prediction is not perfect but giving the user a means to ask a follow-up question would allow the user to correct the prediction to achieve what the user wants to achieve?
    • Yes; in theory a user could ask follow up questions related to the discussion
  • Is the problem one that is solved better or more easily in an iterative approach?
    • Maybe. Most of the time I expect summary will be a single request/response. But in some cases the user may need to ask for additional detail or clarification.

UX

Moving the summary into Duo Chat should not require changing the core output of the summary feature but will require:

1. Defining a pattern for clarifying which issue the summary relates to since it will persist in the chat, separate from the context
   • Requirement: Add the line "Here is a summary of the discussion in Title (IID)". If the title+IID presentation cannot be contextually bound like in GLFM this could always show just the leaf node/project.
2. Defining trigger(s) that result in the summary being returned
   • Requirement: Summarize Discussion button opens the chat with the summary command submitted (user can see /summarize_discussion in the chat)
   • Requirement: /summarize_discussion <issue> can be run in the chat to return the summary.
   • Ideal: On / the user is prompted with the summarize_discussion option (similar to slash commands in IDE)

Iteration Path

MVC 1

Move response into Duo chat: Retain "View summary" button, show the output in Duo chat. Only change to output is to always show a reference to the issue before the summary "Here is a summary of the discussion in linked issue reference"

1. Do not show a "Summarize discussion" trigger chat
2. Chat should recognize the summary such that a user can ask a follow up question about it.