Just introduce a templating language and the CI to generate the yaml as part of your pipeline as way to make it simpler? Above a certain level of complexity, s

Just introduce a templating language and the CI to generate the yaml as part of your pipeline as way to make it simpler? Above a certain level of complexity, sure. But having nothing in between is an annoying state of affairs. I use anchors in Gitlab pipelines and I hardly curse their names.