The workflows were slowing down. Not dramatically. Just... gradually. Week by week.
Then the logs started showing warnings: API rate limit approaching threshold.
100+ workflows per day. Each workflow making 2-3 Kubernetes API calls to read ConfigMaps. That's 200-300 API requests per day. Not sustainable.
The cluster scan was killing performance. Every image push meant querying the API server for all deployments. 5-10 seconds of latency. Hundreds of API calls per day asking the same question.
The answer changed maybe once a week, but I was asking every five minutes.
This is the pattern that fixed it.
Every time someone pushed a container image, my Kubernetes API server winced. The workflow that was supposed to be "instant" took 5-10 seconds and hammered the cluster with requests.
This is the story of how I turned that into 5 milliseconds with zero API calls.