[mgalgs]

> Just properly setting up and maintaining a small k8s cluster looks almost like a fulltime job.

The managed offerings floating around these days (DigitalOcean, AWS, and Google all have them, probably more) are insanely easy to set up and maintain. A managed cluster at DigitalOcean starts at $10/month. I definitely wouldn't recommend standing up your own cluster.

For new projects, I actually find it easier to whip up a deployment.yaml and toss it in my shared k8s cluster (DigitalOcean) than setting up a new VPS where I have to manage updates (including migration when the support window for my OS ends), service restarts, etc.

Github Actions for CI. Makefiles for deployment (`docker build+push` and `kubectl apply`).