Objectively, that's such an odd thing to be unsettled about.
Have we reached a point where all pleasing tones are considered marketing and PR? That we distrust people for acting earnestly?
It's in gitlabs best interests to be a superior product, right now they're an underdog, and their ubiquity on hackernews is not a coincidence, they're a YCombinator backed start-up.
Talking directly to people tends to focus the conversation too much without allowing outside perspective, you might want all of gitlab to be focused on CI, but I may think a casual CI integration would be more reasonable and likely a good solution is a middle ground- also, who do you ask? people rarely talk about their VCS unless it's relevant to discussion.