> Yes, it is somewhat nicely abstracted away, but that doesn't change the fact that in the kube directory alone [1] there are 10 subfolders with even more config files.

That's just what you get with Kubernetes, most of the time. Although powerful and widely utilized, it can be quite... verbose. For a simpler interpretation, you can look at https://github.com/hcengineering/huly-selfhost/blob/main/tem...

There, you have:

  mongodb       supporting service
  minio         supporting service
  elastic       supporting service
  account       their service
  workspace     their service
  front         their service
  collaborator  their service
  transactor    their service
  rekoni        their service

I still would opt for something simpler than that and developing all of the above services would keep multiple teams busy, but the Compose format is actually nice when you want to easily understand what you're looking at.