The point is that CI workflow orchestration and clustered application deployment definitions are not config, at least not in the same way as “here is some hiera

The point is that CI workflow orchestration and clustered application deployment definitions are not config, at least not in the same way as “here is some hierarchy of definitions that change the behavior of an application.” These are attempts to create declarative DSLs that script workflow steps. In the Helm case specifically, the templating engine produces yaml because Kubernetes uses yaml for its manifests, and Kubernetes uses yaml for manifests because it provides a one to one mapping to the actual data structures used by the cluster manager. It’s way beyond config. You’re defining the entire state of a clustered application, including the infrastructure. Only the Values.yaml is config and I don’t see how that alone is all that complicated.