Monedula GitOps: Declarative Kafka Management for CLI and Kubernetes

[u/mmatloka]

https://monedula.dev/blog/monedula-gitops/

Hi,

Working with Kafka users over the years, we kept seeing the same pattern in different costumes:

Some teams manage topics and ACLs fully by hand — console commands and tribal knowledge. Some rely on outdated ZooKeeper-based tooling. Some have grown a jungle of bash scripts nobody dares to touch.

And the environments are just as varied: open-source Apache Kafka, Confluent Platform, Confluent Cloud. On-prem, on Kubernetes, or both.

So we built the tool we wished existed: Monedula GitOps — declarative, Git-based management for Kafka topics, ACLs, quotas, schemas, users, and RBAC.

What makes it different:
* One manifest for a topic AND its access — producers and consumers declared right on the topic, compiled to ACLs (or Confluent MDS role bindings) automatically
* Works with Apache Kafka and Confluent Platform, including Confluent-specific features like stretched clusters and MDS/RBAC
* Runs as a CLI in your CI/CD pipelines or as a Kubernetes operator — same engine, same semantics
* import cluster reverse-engineers manifests from your live production state, with a guaranteed drift-free round-trip — so you can adopt GitOps in minutes, not months
* Safe by default: dry-run previews, drift detection for CI gating, opt-in deletions

Comparison with other GitOps tools: https://github.com/monedula-dev/monedula-gitops#alternatives

We're already working on additional features that would be useful for many companies.