# Snapshot enhancements for Depot CI (https://depot.dev/changelog/2026-06-26-snapshot-enhancements)

> Published 2026-06-26

Snapshots in Depot CI let you bake setup steps into a reusable custom image, so later jobs start from a prepared environment instead of repeating the same work. This release brings a few improvements.

* **Persist environment variables**: Snapshots now persist non-sensitive environment variables, so configuration you set during the snapshot job is there when later jobs run. Sensitive and masked variables remain excluded.

* **Faster registry throughput**: Pushing a snapshot to the registry is much faster. We raised the throughput from 30 Mbps to 1 Gbps.

* **Provenance:**: Every snapshot now carries provenance information as annotations. This helps to answer questions such as which run built it and what the workflow looked like.

* **Create and reuse images in a single workflow:**: Add `snapshot:` to a job to create one. The first run builds the snapshot; later runs reuse it and skip the snapshot job. Combine it with `needs:` to build a snapshot before the job that depends on it. You can also use image shorthands like `e2e-base`, which expands to `{orgId}.registry.depot.dev/depot/snapshots/e2e-base:latest`.

```yaml
jobs:
  setup:
    runs-on: depot-ubuntu-latest
    snapshot: your-image:v1
    steps:
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y your-tool-here

  work:
    needs: setup
    runs-on:
      image: your-image
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: your-tool-here do-the-thing
```

See the [custom images guide](/docs/ci/how-to-guides/custom-images) for the full details.

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