Kustomize

Kustomize offers a purely declarative approach to configuration management that avoids the complexity of template processing. We utilize Kustomize specifically in GitOps workflows where we need to patch third-party Helm charts or apply environment-specific overlays (e.g., adding a sidecar in production or changing a namespace) without forking the upstream manifest. Its native integration into kubectl makes it a lightweight, dependency-free option for last-mile configuration adjustments.