here's the thing - people have a degree of discomfort with "your own YAML". I'm not trying to flame, but genuinely tell you what the evolution of FUD has been.

here's the thing - people have a degree of discomfort with "your own YAML". I'm not trying to flame, but genuinely tell you what the evolution of FUD has been. At this point, you are sitting in a landscape which has already argued around Borg vs Kubernetes and consequently YAML vs Jsonnet vs Cue (e.g. https://github.com/cue-lang/cue/discussions/669 https://github.com/cue-lang/cue/discussions/669). We have original Borg and k8s architects who have spilled lot of ink on this. It is going to be super hard to digest another custom markup. This is really your battleground. People will ask - why not the standrdised Compose specification or standardised jsonnet/cue. In this context, Compose is kind of loved by all (though not the technically superior choice here) the good news is - ur asking the same question probably and thats a good direction. You also have the steps to build up on (k3s, k11s, k9s - yes they are all different things and very cool). Best wishes if you go down this path.