GitOps has a lot of promise—versioned deployments, clear change history, and consistent environments. But for many teams, implementing it quickly turns into a tangle of YAML pipelines, service connections, runners, and webhook maintenance. For smaller applications or teams who just want a clean, reliable deployment loop, the full GitOps machinery can feel like bringing a starship to a bicycle race.

In this talk, I’ll share a lightweight alternative I’ve been using with Azure Container Apps, Azure Container Registry, and Terraform Stacks. When their powers combine, you get a simple, fully functional GitOps-style workflow built on just GitHub, Terraform Cloud, and a couple of Azure primitives.

We’ll walk through how to:
1. Trigger ACR Tasks to automatically build and push new images on code updates
2. Use Terraform Stacks to update image tags and orchestrate deployments
3. Roll out new revisions in Azure Container Apps with zero custom pipelines
4. Preserve GitOps principles—desired state, drift detection, and auditability—without the operational overhead

I’ll show the architecture, demo the workflow end-to-end, and highlight lessons learned, trade-offs, and practical tips from using this pattern in real scenarios. If you’re looking for GitOps simplicity without a full CI/CD platform to maintain, this session will give you a clean, approachable blueprint you can adopt immediately.