CONCEPT Cited by 2 sources

GitOps

GitOps is the operational discipline of treating a Git repository as the single declarative source of truth for system state, paired with a controller that continuously reconciles observed state to declared state. Deploys happen by merging a pull request; rollbacks happen by reverting a commit; the commit log is the audit trail.

The pattern is Red Hat's GitOps definition, the controller-reconciled realization the wiki currently traces is ArgoCD.

The four load-bearing properties

1. Declarative. System state is described in manifests, not in imperative deploy scripts.
2. Versioned and immutable. Git is the store; every change has a commit hash; history is the audit.
3. Pulled automatically. A controller in-cluster polls / watches the repo and applies changes; no CI runner pushes with long-lived creds into prod.
4. Continuously reconciled. Drift (manual clicks in a console, accidental kubectl edits) is re-corrected on the next tick.

GitOps × Crossplane = one substrate for infra + apps

Crossplane extends the same declarative-reconciled model to cloud infrastructure. When paired with ArgoCD, the same GitOps workflow covers both layers — PR-reviewed, continuously reconciled, drift-corrected. This is the posture Santander Catalyst ships (sources/2026-02-26-aws-santander-catalyst-platform-engineering).

Relationship to the wiki's pre-existing patterns/git-based-config-workflow

The wiki already has patterns/git-based-config-workflow from the Airbnb Sitar dynamic-config ingest — "configs-as-code: PR → review → schema-validate → CD." GitOps is a broader superset:

• git-based-config-workflow = configs in Git, CI-validated, CD-pushed, applied by a generic deploy job.
• GitOps = everything in Git (configs, app manifests, infra manifests), pulled by a controller in the target cluster, continuously reconciled, drift-detected.

They're in the same family; GitOps is the more prescriptive, K8s- flavored realization.

Seen in

• sources/2025-12-02-redpanda-operationalize-redpanda-connect-with-gitops — canonical application-tier GitOps tutorial for Redpanda Connect on Kubernetes via Argo CD
• Helm 3.1.0 + Kustomize. Every production operation expressed as a Git commit: scaling (replicaCount: 1 → 3), adding pipelines (new files in config/), updating pipelines (edit existing YAML → Kustomize produces new hash → rolling restart via concepts/configmap-hash-rollout), decommissioning (scale to zero or argocd app delete). Canonicalises the runtime-API-vs-Git source-of-truth tension for the Streams-mode REST API → new concepts/runtime-api-vs-gitops-source-of-truth concept. Observability (kube-prometheus-stack) deployed as a parallel Argo CD Application — "declarative, version-controlled, self-healing, and baked directly into your platform's lifecycle."
• sources/2026-02-26-aws-santander-catalyst-platform-engineering — Santander Catalyst's data-plane claims component is "managed by ArgoCD, a continuous delivery tool ... responsible for continuous synchronization and deployment of application stacks (integrated sets of cloud resources) and configurations, exploring the GitOps concept." Paired with Crossplane for infrastructure on the same EKS control plane cluster — one uniform GitOps workflow for infra + apps.

Related

• systems/argocd — the canonical K8s GitOps controller
• systems/helm — packaging layer GitOps controllers inflate
• systems/kustomize — overlay / generator layer that composes with Helm under GitOps
• concepts/universal-resource-provisioning — natural GitOps target for infrastructure
• concepts/runtime-api-vs-gitops-source-of-truth — the discipline that preserves "Git is the single source of truth" against runtime CRUD APIs
• concepts/configmap-hash-rollout — Kustomize mechanism that makes ConfigMap updates Git-commit-triggered rather than drift-silent
• concepts/standalone-vs-streams-mode — deployment-mode decision where GitOps discipline branches
• patterns/git-based-config-workflow — Airbnb-Sitar-shape sibling pattern
• patterns/argocd-multi-source-helm-plus-values — canonical GitOps composition for Helm chart + values split
• patterns/kustomize-wraps-helm-chart — canonical GitOps composition for Kustomize + Helm
• concepts/control-plane-data-plane-separation — GitOps controllers live on the control plane