Erich Blume 5b91a1c315 Review why-gitops doc (#184 )

## Summary
- Fix misleading `[[tailscale|Pulumi]]` wiki-link → `[[pulumi]]`
- Simplify `[[ansible|Ansible]]` and `[[argocd|ArgoCD]]` to plain wiki-links per convention
- Rename "Tailnet" layer to "Network" to reflect Pulumi's full scope (Tailscale ACLs + Gandi DNS)
- Fix `apt install` → `brew install` (indri is macOS)
- Add `[[pulumi]]` to Related section
- Add `last-reviewed: 2026-02-13` frontmatter

Reviewed-on: https://forge.ops.eblu.me/eblume/blumeops/pulls/184

2026-02-13 16:48:06 -08:00

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Why GitOps?

Note: This article was drafted by AI and reviewed by Erich. I plan to rewrite all explanatory content in my own words - these serve as placeholders to establish the documentation structure.

BlumeOps uses GitOps principles for managing personal infrastructure. This might seem like overkill for a homelab, but there are good reasons.

The Problem with Manual Infrastructure

Traditional server management involves SSHing into machines and running commands. This works, but creates problems:

Drift: The actual state diverges from what you think it is
Amnesia: You forget what you changed and why
Fragility: One bad command can break things with no easy rollback
Bus factor: Only you know how it works (even AI assistants struggle without context)

Git as the Source of Truth

GitOps inverts the model: instead of pushing changes to servers, you commit desired state to Git, and automation pulls it into reality.

Benefits:

Every change is tracked with commit history
Pull requests enable review before deployment
Rollback is just git revert
The repo is the documentation

Why This Matters for a Homelab

A personal homelab isn't a production environment, but it shares the same challenges:

Memory is unreliable - Six months from now, you won't remember why you configured Caddy that way
Experimentation is constant - You try things, break things, want to undo things
AI assistance needs context - Claude can help much more effectively when it can read your infrastructure as code

The BlumeOps Approach

BlumeOps uses layered GitOps:

Layer	Tool	What it manages
Network	pulumi	Tailscale ACLs, tags; Gandi DNS
Host config	ansible	Services on indri
Kubernetes	argocd	Containerized workloads

Each layer has its own reconciliation loop:

Pulumi applies on mise run tailnet-up
Ansible applies on mise run provision-indri
ArgoCD watches Git and syncs manually or automatically

Trade-offs

GitOps isn't free:

Learning curve - You need to understand Ansible, ArgoCD, Pulumi
Indirection - Can't just brew install something; need to add it to config
Complexity - More moving parts than a simple server

But for BlumeOps, the trade-off is worth it. The infrastructure is complex enough that managing it imperatively would be error-prone, and the GitOps approach enables effective AI-assisted operations.

architecture - How the pieces fit together
pulumi - Network infrastructure as code
argocd - Kubernetes GitOps
ansible - Host configuration

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