The SaaS era assumed running software yourself was too expensive. AI agents are changing that math — and with it, the case for licensed, self-hosted software over subscriptions.
Stop treating your CI as a separate, fragile ecosystem that needs its own set of rules. Most developers waste hours debugging “it works on my machine” issues because their GitHub Actions workflows are trying to solve provisioning and caching problems that have already been solved in development. By shifting to self-hosted runners and leveraging environment managers like Devenv, you can achieve perfect parity between your local terminal and your CI, turning a complex YAML headache into a simple, lightning-fast 24-second feedback loop.
Is AI really just a “tourist” when it comes to Infrastructure as Code? While many DevOps practitioners find comfort in AI’s current struggles with complex Terraform repositories, this article argues we are misdiagnosing the problem. By comparing our current DevOps landscape to the “pre-React” era of web development, we explore why a lack of abstraction—not a lack of intelligence—is holding AI back. Discover why the shift toward high-level abstractions like BigConfig is turning AI from a fumbling tourist into a superhuman, and what this means for the future of your career.
Can you build a professional-grade cloud platform without writing a single line of code? By leveraging BigConfig and AI, I created the blueprint of a full-stack infrastructure—complete with DNS, SMTP, and TLS—in just three minutes using nothing but Markdown and declarative data.
By treating infrastructure as “pure data” rather than complex scripts, BigConfig acts as the “React of DevOps,” encapsulating messy Terraform and Ansible logic into clean, reusable components. This post explores a hands-off workflow where a simple Markdown plan is transformed into a working blueprint, proving that with the right abstractions, non-technical users can manage non-trivial infrastructure as easily as filling in a configuration manifest.
Stop asking AI to write “assembly code” for your deployment. Writing 500-line Terraform files is brittle, verbose, and a recipe for hallucination. In this article, we explore a paradigm shift: Component-Based DevOps.
By using BigConfig and the “once” package, you can move away from manual scripting and toward a “React-style” architecture for infrastructure. Learn how to combine Claude Code with high-level abstractions to build your own personal PaaS on providers like Hetzner and OCI—achieving deterministic, zero-touch deployments without the DSL headache. It’s time to stop writing infrastructure and start composing it.
Drawing a parallel to the React revolution in frontend development, this article explores how shifting from Separation by Technology to Separation by Concerns can solve the modern infrastructure bottleneck. Learn how BigConfig uses a component-based approach to unify Kubernetes, Terraform, and Ansible, enabling modularity, interchangeability, and a “clean interface” for your entire stack.
Vibe coding has revolutionized how we build apps, but deployment is still stuck in the manual ages. Discover how BigConfig’s once bridges the gap, automating compute, DNS, and SMTP into a seamless pipeline that brings us one step closer to Natural Language Infrastructure.
BigConfig started as a modest script to simplify complex Terraform projects, but it has grown into something far more ambitious. By moving beyond the “library” mindset and embracing the role of a package manager for infrastructure, BigConfig overcomes the traditional barriers of language adoption. This article explores how a unified Clojure-based workflow—spanning the REPL, the Shell, and the Library—offers a total solution for developers tired of juggling fragmented YAML templates and rigid deployment schemas.
While “easy” tools often promise quick starts by mimicking familiar backend languages, they frequently buckle under the non-linear complexity of real-world infrastructure operations. This article explores why building a custom, data-driven workflow engine in Clojure—leveraging immutability, qualified keywords, and a robust REPL—outperforms “easy” alternatives for orchestrating tools like Terraform and Ansible. By prioritizing a simple architectural foundation over the easy path of standard CI/CD scripts, we gain the ability to handle complex branching, resolve state isolation through nested options, and achieve instantaneous debugging that “duct-tape” solutions simply cannot provide.
Stop wrestling with fragmented DevOps scripts. Learn how to use the BigConfig Package and Babashka to build unified, chainable workflows that bridge the gap between OpenTofu, Ansible, and custom Clojure automation.
