GitOps
Operating infrastructure by making Git the single source of truth: the cluster continuously syncs itself to what is in the repo.
GitOps is an operating model where a Git repository is the single source of truth for infrastructure and deployments, and an automated agent continuously reconciles the running system to match what is committed. You change production by merging a pull request, not by running commands against the cluster.
Worked example: a tool like Argo CD watches the repo; merging a change that sets the image to v2 makes the agent update the cluster to v2, and if someone manually changes the cluster, the agent reverts it back to the repo’s state. Gotcha: Git becomes the audit log and rollback mechanism (revert the commit to roll back), which is powerful — but it means secrets need careful handling (never commit them in plaintext) and the reconciliation agent itself becomes critical infrastructure.