GitOps

GitOps is an operating model for deploying and managing infrastructure and applications. The desired state lives as declarative files in a Git repository, which acts as the single source of truth. An agent running inside the target environment pulls that state and keeps the live system matching it. Every change is a reviewed commit.

How it works

A traditional CD (continuous delivery) pipeline pushes changes into a cluster, so the CI server needs cluster credentials. In GitOps, an agent such as Argo CD or Flux runs in the cluster and pulls from the repo. Argo CD, for example, checks for changes every 3 minutes by default. If someone edits a resource by hand, the agent reports drift and can revert it to what Git says. A rollback is a git revert of the commit.

Why it matters in production

Git history becomes the audit log of who changed what and when. Credentials stay inside the cluster instead of in the build tool. The cost is discipline: secrets, environment overrides and manual hotfixes all need a Git-first path, or drift creeps back.