GitLab Wikis and Snippets

GitLab Wikis give teams a built-in place to write project documentation. Snippets are a separate tool for storing and sharing small pieces of reusable code without creating a full project.

What Is a Wiki?

A wiki is a collection of pages inside your project where you write documentation using Markdown. Unlike a README — which is a single file — a wiki can grow into dozens of pages with a sidebar for navigation.

  Project Wiki Structure
  ──────────────────────
  Home
  ├── Getting Started
  │    ├── Installation Guide
  │    └── Configuration Options
  ├── API Reference
  │    ├── Authentication
  │    └── Endpoints
  └── Troubleshooting

Enabling and Accessing the Wiki

Wikis are enabled by default. Access yours at Project → Plan → Wiki. If the Wiki menu item is missing, an Owner or Maintainer has disabled it at Settings → General → Visibility → Wiki.

Creating Your First Wiki Page

Click Create your first page on the empty wiki. Enter a page title — this becomes part of the URL. Write content using Markdown. Click Create page to save.

  Page title:  Installation Guide
  URL becomes: gitlab.com/acme/project/-/wikis/installation-guide

  Content (Markdown):
  ## Requirements
  - Node.js 18 or higher
  - PostgreSQL 14

  ## Steps
  1. Clone the repository
  2. Run `npm install`
  3. Copy `.env.example` to `.env`

Formatting Wiki Pages

GitLab wikis support Markdown, AsciiDoc, and reStructuredText. Markdown is the simplest choice for most teams.

Markdown Syntax	Result
## Heading	Large heading
bold text	bold text
`inline code`	Highlighted code word
[Link text](URL)	Clickable hyperlink
![alt](image-url)	Embedded image
[[Another Page]]	Internal wiki link

Internal Wiki Links

Use double brackets to link between wiki pages:

  [[Installation Guide]]   → links to the Installation Guide page
  [[API/Authentication]]   → links to a nested page

GitLab renders these as clickable links and shows them in a related pages panel.

The Wiki Sidebar

Add a page named _sidebar to create a custom navigation sidebar that appears on every wiki page.

  _sidebar page content:
  ──────────────────────
  **Getting Started**
  - [[Installation Guide]]
  - [[Configuration Options]]

  **Reference**
  - [[API Authentication]]
  - [[Endpoints]]

Wiki Version History

Every save creates a version. Click Page history on any wiki page to see all past versions, who made each change, and when. Click any version to read it. Click Compare to see exactly what changed between two versions.

  Installation Guide — Page History
  ─────────────────────────────────────────────
  v5  Sara     "Add Docker instructions"   today
  v4  Arjun    "Fix typo in step 3"        2 days ago
  v3  Riya     "Add screenshots"           1 week ago
  v2  Arjun    "Expand requirements list"  2 weeks ago
  v1  Sara     "Initial page"              1 month ago

Cloning the Wiki as a Git Repository

The wiki is itself a Git repository. Clone it to edit pages locally in your preferred text editor:

  git clone git@gitlab.com:acme/project.wiki.git

  Edit pages → git add . → git commit -m "Update API docs" → git push

Changes pushed to the wiki repo appear instantly in the GitLab interface.

What Are Snippets?

A snippet is a small piece of code you want to save and share, without needing a full project. Use snippets for reusable scripts, config templates, one-liners, or code examples.

  Use case examples:
  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ✅ A bash script that backs up a database
  ✅ An nginx config template your team reuses
  ✅ A Python one-liner for parsing JSON
  ✅ A SQL query you run every Monday
  ❌ An entire application (use a project instead)

Project Snippets vs Personal Snippets

Type	Location	Visible To
Project snippet	Inside a specific project	Project members
Personal snippet	Your profile (gitlab.com/-/snippets)	Public, internal, or private (your choice)

Creating a Snippet

Click + in the top navigation bar and choose New snippet. Add a title, choose the file name and language, paste your code, and set visibility. GitLab applies syntax highlighting automatically based on the file extension.

  Title:     PostgreSQL backup script
  Filename:  backup.sh
  Language:  Shell (auto-detected from .sh)
  Visibility: Internal

  #!/bin/bash
  pg_dump mydb > backup_$(date +%F).sql
  echo "Backup complete"

Multi-File Snippets

A single snippet can contain multiple files. Click Add another file when creating or editing a snippet. This is useful for a config file and its corresponding README, for example.

Sharing and Embedding Snippets

Every snippet has a unique URL you can share. Public snippets also provide an embed code — a short script tag you paste into any webpage to display the snippet with syntax highlighting.

  Snippet URL:
  gitlab.com/-/snippets/1234567

  Embed code:
  <script src="https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/1234567.js"></script>

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