In this model there are already three different command lines to run the thing in three different modes. Deployment complexity of moving that decision one notch

In this model there are already three different command lines to run the thing in three different modes. Deployment complexity of moving that decision one notch left to buildtime instead of startup time seems like it doesn’t increase the accidental complexity at all. In fact now you can eliminate variation in how your three different processes are started up and health checked and monitored, so instead of code that knows how to operate three different things, you have code that knows how to start and operate an arbitrary thing, and you parameterize it with your three different containers. Oh hey - that’s what kubernetes is for. Maybe all this ‘complexity’ of tooling isn’t dumb after all.