What is ArgoCD and what problem does it solve?

ArgoCD is a declarative, GitOps-based continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. It automates the deployment of applications to Kubernetes clusters by continuously syncing the cluster state to match the desired state defined in a Git repository.

Before ArgoCD, teams often relied on push-based CI/CD pipelines where a CI server would apply manifests to the cluster after a build. This meant credentials to the cluster had to live inside the CI system, rollbacks required re-running pipelines, and there was no single source of truth for what was actually deployed. ArgoCD flips this to a pull-based model: an agent running inside the cluster watches Git and applies changes itself, removing the need to expose cluster credentials externally.

It solves three concrete problems: drift detection (it continuously compares live state vs Git state and reports or auto-corrects differences), auditability (every change is a Git commit with author, timestamp, and message), and multi-cluster management (a single ArgoCD instance can deploy to many clusters from one control plane).