DevOps Dictionary

GitOps is an operating approach for deploying and managing applications and infrastructure where Git repositories hold the desired state of environments as versioned, reviewable configuration. Instead of applying changes directly in a cluster or cloud console, teams update declarative files (for example, Kubernetes manifests or infrastructure config), and an automated reconciler continuously compares what is running to what is committed in Git and applies the differences to bring the system back into sync. This reduces configuration drift, inconsistent environments, and hard-to-audit manual changes by making every change traceable to a commit and reproducible through standard pull request workflows. With GitOps, releases and rollbacks are predictable because the environment converges on the committed state; without it, deployments often depend on one-off scripts and human intervention, increasing the risk of outages and unexpected differences between environments. This gap exists because GitOps enforces intent through a continuous reconciliation loop rather than relying on one-time actions.