In the context of deploying microservice-based applications with Kubernetes, GitOps is a declarative approach to continuous delivery (CD) that aims to address challenges such as dynamically managing API endpoints and databases during deployments, understanding differences in Kubernetes resources and configurations across environments, and ensuring the live state of clusters aligns with desired states. By storing configuration files and deployment artifacts in a central Git repository and using CD tools like Argo CD and Flux, teams can apply real-time changes to their clusters to ensure they're up-to-date. GitOps is an operational framework composed of best practices that brings familiar developer workflows to infrastructure management. It decouples the management of infrastructure and deployments from application code, enabling developer teams and operation teams to have strictly defined areas of product ownership and a clear method of implementing access controls. By using GitOps, organizations can promote releases across environments more efficiently and effectively, with tools like Kargo providing declarative promotion criteria and continuous visibility into deployment workflows.