How to access gitlab from git cli using personal access token?

Create a personal access token by following

https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/creating-a-personal-access-token

Using the personal access token to authenticate, lets clone a repository.

Form your url as shown below. Replace the personal_token with the token you have got.

# To clone using personal token
git clone https://oauth2:personal_token@gitlab.com/username/project.git 

If the project is already cloned and you have done few commits already by painstakingly providing the login and token every time then do this:

1. Open the file .git/config in vscode or any editor you prefer
2. Change the url as show below with your personal access token

[remote "origin"]
        url = https://oauth2:1AbCDeF_g2HIJKLMNOPqr@gitlab.com/yourusername/project.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

For a more robust solution look at A function to clone git repository using gitlab personal access token