Jenkins

Jenkins runs your builds and deployments. Connecting a controller gives you an overview screen, a standards audit, and lets the assistant answer questions about builds.

Before you start

You need:

• the URL of your Jenkins controller, e.g. https://jenkins.example.com — it must be reachable from the internet, not only from your office network;
• a username;
• an API token for that user.

Getting an API token

1. Sign into Jenkins.
2. Click your name (top right) → Configure.
3. Under API Token, choose Add new Token, name it devops-agent, and Generate.
4. Copy it now — Jenkins shows it once.

Use a token, never the account password. Tokens can be revoked individually without changing anyone's login.

Best practice: create a dedicated Jenkins user with read-only permissions for this, unless you want the assistant to be able to trigger builds.

Adding it

Jenkins → Add Jenkins:

You can register more than one controller per project.

What you get

Overview — jobs and their recent build status, so a broken pipeline is visible without opening Jenkins.

Audit — the interesting part. It scores the controller against a seeded set of standards (security settings, plugin hygiene, build configuration, access control) and produces a PDF report.

Use it when you inherit a Jenkins nobody has looked after, before a security review, or to justify the time it takes to fix things.

Chat access — ask "did last night's deploy pass?", "why did the build fail?", "list the jobs that have not run in 90 days". In Execute mode it can trigger builds, and it will ask first.

Troubleshooting

Permissions

Adding and removing controllers: Owner or Admin. Running an audit and viewing jobs: Operator and above. Viewers can read job lists. See Roles.