A Tool Is Not a Platform (And Your Team Knows the Difference)

Most infrastructure teams have a moment where someone says “we should build a platform.” The motivation is real: teams are duplicating work, the current setup is hard to use consistently, and a more structured approach would help. A few months later, the platform is a Terraform module collection, a GitLab CI template, a shared repository of scripts, and a README that several people have tried to keep current. That is a useful thing.