The ApplicationSet comparison is the most useful part here. Seeing the three separate Application files next to the single generator template makes the duplication cost concrete, and your point about environment values living in the generator rather than in copied manifests is the part teams usually learn the hard way. One thing I would add from experience is to decide early whether sync is manual or automated per environment, since that choice changes how drift shows up in the reconciliation loop you describe in step 3. Looking forward to part 2 and the hands-on install.
Appreciate the feedback! Completely agree on deciding syncPolicy early—treating OutOfSync as an auto-healing trigger in dev versus an explicit approval gate in prod makes a huge difference in how teams interact with the reconciliation loop. Definitely planning to cover that hands-on in Part 2!
OneLifeVibe
The ApplicationSet comparison is the most useful part here. Seeing the three separate Application files next to the single generator template makes the duplication cost concrete, and your point about environment values living in the generator rather than in copied manifests is the part teams usually learn the hard way. One thing I would add from experience is to decide early whether sync is manual or automated per environment, since that choice changes how drift shows up in the reconciliation loop you describe in step 3. Looking forward to part 2 and the hands-on install.