Platform & DevOps·The orchestrator's model of the world
you write down what should exist, submit it, and something else works out the steps — including that most of them are already done.
Declarative configuration
Also calleddeclarative, desired-state configuration
Describing the end state you want rather than the actions to reach it, and letting a controller compute the difference. Its defining property is that applying the same description twice is a no-op, which is what makes automation safe to re-run and re-run by default. The cost is a loss of directness: you cannot straightforwardly express 'do this once', and you have to learn to debug a system that is arguing with you rather than one that failed a step.