What shipped this week Between September 27 and October 3, 2026, we published 4 changelog entries and 35 releases across 13 public repos. Three things run through them: more control and predictability for platform teams, fewer gaps for teams moving off GitHub Actions, and more of the platform agents can drive directly. Tightened how secrets are handled. Pipeline-scoped secrets live in pipeline set…
You can now subscribe to RSS feeds for macOS base image releases on Buildkite hosted agents, making it easier to keep up with changes to your build environments. For updates to stable base images used in production, add the stable RSS feed to your preferred RSS reader. If your organisation wants access to the latest Xcode betas and runtimes, request a move to the canary channel. You can follow tho…
If you belong to more than one Buildkite organization, you can now choose which one each Remote MCP Server connection uses. Add the organization's slug to the server URL: https://mcp.buildkite.com/mcp?organization=your-organization When your MCP client asks you to authorize, that organization is already selected. This also works with toolset and read-only URLs, such as https://mcp.buildkite.com/mc…
From 1 January 2027, each minor release line of the Buildkite agent will be supported for one year from its first stable release. The final three months are a deprecation period: agents remain supported, with warnings encouraging you to upgrade. Installing an agent or updating to a newer patch doesn't restart that window. The policy applies to existing releases, using their original release dates:…
If you can edit a pipeline and manage its associated cluster, you can now create and manage secrets directly from Pipeline settings → Secrets. Pipeline secrets are cluster secrets with access restricted to the current pipeline. You can add branch, queue, build source, or creator conditions to narrow access further, and secret values remain hidden after creation. The new view keeps pipeline-specifi…
Job logs on the new build page are easier to scan now that Buildkite folds de-emphasized system groups into compact rows by default. Command output and the groups you usually need remain visible, while setup and other supporting output take up less space. Select a folded row to reveal just that section in place. The job log toolbar also lets you Show system groups temporarily and hide them again,…
Buildkite Cache is now available in public preview. It saves and restores files and directories across pipeline jobs and builds. Use it for package manager download caches, compiled dependencies, and other regenerable data to avoid repeating work. Define what to cache in .buildkite/cache.yml, then use buildkite-agent cache restore and buildkite-agent cache save in your pipeline. Cache keys let you…
Run a pipeline schedule as configured, or customize a one-off build without changing the schedule. Helpful when you need to validate your schedules before turning them on. Two actions on the schedule page make the choice clear: Run now asks for confirmation, then creates a build using the schedule's saved message, commit, branch, and environment variables. The build has source schedule, just like…
The Buildkite Agent Stack for Kubernetes Helm chart now includes built-in support for Slack App integration. You can configure Slack notifications directly in your Helm values without needing a separate sidecar or custom webhook setup. The chart handles token management and channel routing so your pipelines can post build status updates to Slack out of the box.
Understand PR retry patterns in your existing observability tool, without joining webhook data. Buildkite's server-side OpenTelemetry traces include PR metadata, including for GitHub merge-queue builds, and job retry metadata to compare manual and automatic retries and follow attempts. See how often PRs need retries and which repositories have the most retry activity. Comparing those patterns over…
Elastic CI Stack for AWS v7 is now available, bringing Buildkite Agent v4 to both Linux and Windows instances. Agent v4 clears out functionality deprecated since v3 arrived in 2018 and makes supported behavior the default. New capabilities have continued shipping in v3, so for most setups the move changes nothing about how you use the agent. Elastic CI Stack v7 updates its configuration to match.…
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…