Yo, so the main reason that its not working is because the stages keyword in your .gitlab.yml file overwrites the stages. Since .pre is a special stage that isn't listed in .gitlab.yml, it gets ignored when you define stages:.

Just add - .pre to stages .

include:
  - local: "prestage.yml"

stages:
  - .pre  # Add here
  - build
  - test

job1:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "This job runs in the build stage."

job2:
  stage: test
  script:
    - echo "This job runs in the test stage."

Other settings leave as it is was. And it should work