What key is used to determine the current launch point in GitLab CI/CD?

In GitLab CI/CD, the current trigger point (current job or pipeline) is determined using the environment variable CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE. This variable indicates what triggered the pipeline, such as push, merge_request, schedule, etc.

Additionally, to identify a specific job, the variable CI_JOB_NAME is used, and for the pipeline — CI_PIPELINE_ID.

An example of usage in .gitlab-ci.yml:

job:
  script:
    - echo "Pipeline triggered by $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE"
    - echo "Current job: $CI_JOB_NAME"

Thus, the key variable for determining the trigger point is CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE.