>If you are still with me, this is about the point where things start to get incomprehensible. Just close your eyes and keep copying/pasting yaml.

Excellent writeup. This line seems to track with what other people have told me about maintaining Kubernetes deployments. Almost no-one really understands the YAML (beyond the basics), so you end up with services defined via tens of thousands of lines of unmaintainable copy pasta YAML. This problem probably isn't going to surface so quickly (if ever) for a smaller project.