We have a new PM for the runner and this is on his agenda to research and improve. The reality is that the job execution environment is complex - each job does just have a simple script section which is just shell commands, but there is a lot of context that impacts behavior (to which environment are you deploying, what environment variables are set specific to that environment, is it a protected environment with variables that are shareable to any random user, are artifacts being passed, and so on.) Making iterating on pipelines easier is definitely on our agenda, and adding your thoughts to issues like https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner /issues/2226 or making new ones for your specific use case will help. We are also working on other oblique solutions to make pipelines easier to iterate on like https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/39527, which help solve the problem in a different way where you don't need to try to replicate the state of the world on your local environment but can still find and fix problems quickly.

EDIT: I should also mention, https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/2072 is a big priority for us where we want to reduce the time to first green pipeline (not just for new users, but for new projects too). Feedback is welcome there as well.