What we've developed that is similar is a meta-layer above terraform to take high-level intent and use that to generate terraform which is then committed to git and auto-actuated.
This is nice because it's still all using git and you can continuously merge in updates as the 'best practice' definitions in the intent get updated. It allows teams to maintain their own customizations and eventually promote them to up to the intent level to capture them as a best practice so other teams can benefit from them.
I love the idea of high-level intents and abstractions. They’re tough to get right, but when they click, they make dev teams move way faster.
Cloud APIs mix operational and developer concerns, which is part of the problem. A single API call for something like a database forces you to think about instance types, failover strategies, and security settings when all a developer really cares about is, "I need a database that can handle X traffic and supports Y extensions."
I’m actually working on a write-up about abstractions for a CNCF infra white paper and would love to get your thoughts. A lot of teams struggle with the balance between standardization and flexibility, and it sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this too. Let me know if you’d be up for a chat.
This is nice because it's still all using git and you can continuously merge in updates as the 'best practice' definitions in the intent get updated. It allows teams to maintain their own customizations and eventually promote them to up to the intent level to capture them as a best practice so other teams can benefit from them.