DevOps and Platform Engineering

Use this skill for platform, infrastructure, CI/CD, GitOps, observability, and incident-operating-model design. Keep the output operational: target architecture, rollout path, guardrails, ownership, and artifacts.

Quick Reference

Need	Starting Direction
infrastructure provisioning	Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi, or cloud-native IaC
cluster or app deployment	GitOps first for steady-state, direct tooling for local iteration
CI/CD	protected pipelines plus workload identity and supply-chain controls — see supply-chain-security
observability	OpenTelemetry plus metrics, logs, traces, and SLO-based alerting
platform engineering	golden paths, policy-as-code, and self-service interfaces
incident operations	runbooks, severity model, escalation, and postmortems

Workflow

1. classify the dominant problem:
   • provisioning
   • deployment
   • CI/CD
   • observability
   • platform engineering
   • security hardening
   • incident operations
2. choose the smallest viable toolchain that matches the runtime and team skill
3. load the relevant reference and template set
4. verify version-sensitive or vendor-sensitive claims before final guidance
5. finish with concrete operational outputs: plan, controls, owners, and artifacts

Decision Rules

Situation	Rule
any infrastructure change	IaC first; no clickops
steady-state production reconciliation	GitOps (Argo CD / Flux) over push-based deploys
CI credentials	workload identity (OIDC) over long-lived secrets
alerting	SLO burn-rate alerts; suppress raw host-metric noise
new environments	platform template + policy guard; no snowflakes
supply-chain integrity	SLSA build track + cosign keyless signing
drift	detect via reconciler or terraform plan in CI; never discover by accident

Related Routing

• service-level retries, deadlines, and chaos engineering -> qa-resilience
• telemetry implementation details -> qa-observability
• backend service design -> software-backend
• system architecture -> software-architecture-design
• appsec-specific design -> software-security-appsec
• Git branch and PR workflow policy -> dev-git-workflow

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Guardrails

Domain	Do	Anti-pattern to avoid
Provisioning	all material changes in IaC; explicit promotion gates	clickops drift; untagged infrastructure
Delivery	protected pipelines; artifact provenance; rollback + smoke checks	pipelines without identity boundaries
Platform	golden paths before self-service; policy-as-code that reduces variation	tools shipped without adoption path or ownership
Observability	define SLOs first; join logs/traces/metrics on shared trace ID	alert fatigue from raw host-metric thresholds
Incidents	postmortems feed runbooks and platform changes	postmortems that stop at narrative
Cost	tagging + budget alerts at resource creation; monthly right-sizing	unmanaged snowflake environments; unreviewed reservations

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Navigation

Reference routing

Load when…	Reference
supply-chain, SBOM, signing, SLSA	references/supply-chain-security.md
DORA's five metrics and team archetypes (Elite/High/Medium/Low tiers are retired), AI-adoption instability tax, general DevOps best practices	references/devops-best-practices.md
GitLab CI — parent/child pipelines, MR variable traps, env-export pattern	references/gitlab-ci-patterns.md
choosing a tool (IaC, GitOps, CI, policy, observability)	references/tool-landscape.md
golden paths, internal developer portal, platform maturity, when NOT to build an IDP, platform-vs-product boundary, measuring team cognitive load (Weis four-cluster model, Teamperature, leadership load), CI/IaC/GitOps adoption sequencing	references/platform-engineering-patterns.md
GitOps multi-env promotion, Argo CD / Flux patterns, automation lag and why continuous apply beats apply-on-change	references/gitops-workflows.md
Terraform state isolation, why terraform workspace is wrong for environments, stage/prod/mgmt/global layout, secrets-in-state and backend choice	references/terraform-state-architecture.md
stack sizing (monolithic → application-group → service → micro), blast radius, "is my stack a monolith?"	references/stack-sizing-patterns.md
IaC testing rungs and their blind spots, infrastructure test diamond vs pyramid, Swiss-cheese layering	references/infrastructure-testing-strategy.md
on-call, severity model, escalation, postmortems	references/sre-incident-management.md
day-2 operational runbooks, environment hygiene	references/operational-patterns.md
AIOps alert correlation, automated triage	references/aiops-patterns.md
Kalman canary, cost autoscaler, CI capacity stabiliser	references/control-theory-applied.md
capacity planning, saturation SLO, pipeline bottleneck hunt	references/queueing-theory-applied.md
CI/CD throughput recovery, constraint surfacing, spend reallocation	references/theory-of-constraints-applied.md
platform-team charter, algedonic escalation, PRR audit	references/cybernetics-vsm-applied.md
MTBF/MTTR, availability budgets, FMEA	references/reliability-theory-applied.md
CAP/PACELC, consensus, idempotency, quorums	references/distributed-systems-applied.md
source URLs and release trackers	data/sources.json

Templates

AWS / GCP / Azure

• assets/aws/template-aws-ops.md — AWS day-2 ops checklist
• assets/aws/template-aws-terraform.md — AWS Terraform module skeleton
• assets/aws/template-cost-optimization.md — AWS cost right-sizing and reservation review
• assets/gcp/template-gcp-ops.md — GCP day-2 ops checklist
• assets/gcp/template-gcp-terraform.md — GCP Terraform module skeleton
• assets/azure/template-azure-ops.md — Azure day-2 ops checklist

Kubernetes

• assets/kubernetes/template-kubernetes-ops.md — cluster day-2 ops
• assets/kubernetes/template-ha-dr.md — HA and disaster-recovery topology
• assets/kubernetes/template-platform-api.md — platform API contract for self-service
• assets/kubernetes/template-k8s-deploy.yaml — base Deployment manifest

Docker / Kafka

• assets/docker/template-docker-ops.md — image build and runtime hardening
• assets/kafka/template-kafka-ops.md — Kafka cluster operations

Terraform / IaC

• assets/terraform-iac/template-iac-terraform.md — root module structure
• assets/terraform-iac/template-module.md — reusable child module
• assets/terraform-iac/template-env-promotion.md — environment promotion workflow

CI/CD and GitOps

• assets/cicd-pipelines/template-ci-cd.md — generic CI/CD pipeline design
• assets/cicd-pipelines/template-github-actions.md — GitHub Actions workflow with OIDC
• assets/cicd-pipelines/template-gitops.md — GitOps promotion pipeline
• assets/cicd-pipelines/template-release-safety.md — release gates and rollback

Monitoring / Observability

• assets/monitoring-observability/template-slo.md — SLO definition sheet
• assets/monitoring-observability/template-alert-rules.md — burn-rate alert rules
• assets/monitoring-observability/template-observability-slo.md — full observability + SLO stack
• assets/monitoring-observability/template-loadtest-perf.md — load-test and performance baseline

Incident response

• assets/incident-response/template-postmortem.md — blameless postmortem
• assets/incident-response/template-runbook-starter.md — runbook starter
• assets/incident-response/template-incident-comm.md — stakeholder communications
• assets/incident-response/template-incident-response.md — full IR playbook

Security / Cost

• assets/security/template-security-hardening.md — hardening checklist
• assets/cost-governance/template-cost-governance.md — FinOps tagging and budget controls

Shared utilities

• ../software-clean-code-standard/references/config-validation.md
• ../software-clean-code-standard/references/resilience-utilities.md
• ../software-clean-code-standard/references/logging-utilities.md
• ../software-clean-code-standard/references/observability-utilities.md

Related Skills

• ../qa-resilience/SKILL.md
• ../data-sql-optimization/SKILL.md
• ../qa-observability/SKILL.md
• ../qa-debugging/SKILL.md
• ../software-security-appsec/SKILL.md
• ../software-backend/SKILL.md
• ../software-architecture-design/SKILL.md
• ../dev-api-design/SKILL.md
• ../dev-git-workflow/SKILL.md
• ../ai-mlops/SKILL.md

Trend Awareness Protocol

When users ask for current tool recommendations, verify:

• current supported Kubernetes and ecosystem versions
• active IaC and GitOps tool state
• current observability and policy-engine capabilities
• current CI/CD and platform-tool support windows

Prefer official docs and release notes over blogs or rankings.

Fact-Checking

• Verify current versions, deprecations, support windows, pricing, and cloud limits before final answers.
• Prefer official docs and release notes for named tools and platforms.
• If web access is unavailable, mark version-sensitive guidance as unverified.

Learnings Loop

Before applying this skill on a non-trivial task, read learnings.consolidated.md in this directory (and learnings.md if present).

After applying it, if you encountered a pattern worth remembering, a mistake worth preventing, or a domain fact that surprised you, append one dated bullet to learnings.md via agents-skills-feedback-loop/scripts/append_learning.py. Do not modify SKILL.md itself.