Platform teams face a paradox: developers need simple APIs and UIs, but building and maintaining them is a huge operational burden that pulls teams away from core platform work.

This session coins "Reverse GitOps," an API-first pattern that solves this by placing a light Kubernetes control plane in front of your Git repository. We'll show how platform teams can define simple CRDs that act as a declarative API for their platform, which can then be used to build GUIs (Backstage/Headlamp) or to allow devs and AI agents to interact with the platform programmatically.

When a user interacts with this API, the open-source `gitops-reverser` operator translates their high-level intent into a clean Git commit. This commit creates a pull request, preserving your existing review process. Once merged, this simple CR can be "exploded" into a full set of production-ready manifests by tools like KRO or Crossplane, integrating with your existing GitOps workflow powered by tools Flux or ArgoCD.