efokou-labs GitOps Platform

Problem and constraints

Demos and experiments were spread across one-off repos and cloud accounts, so onboarding a full stack meant tribal knowledge and manual setup.

Role and ownership

Sole designer and implementer of the lab platform, modules, sample apps, and CI teardown patterns.

Key engineering decisions

• Standardize on kind + Argo CD overlays so a single cluster path covers app and infra demos
• Keep Terraform modules testable with create-and-destroy CI so cloud demos do not leave orphan resources
• Document architecture decisions alongside runnable workloads rather than slides alone

Tradeoffs and alternatives

• Local kind favors fast iteration over production multi-tenant realism
• AWS demos are intentionally ephemeral - less long-lived showcase, more honest teardown hygiene

Reliability, deployment, and observability

CI validates modules; GitOps overlays keep app deployment declarative; AWS resources are torn down after each run.

Results and lessons

• Engineers can bootstrap a full stack from a fresh clone without bespoke setup notes
• Infrastructure demos stay auditable and disposable - CI teardown avoids leftover cloud resources

Technologies