Quiz · The outer delivery loop

A short knowledge check. Answers are hidden behind callouts so you can self-grade after answering.

1. What are the four stages of the outer delivery loop, in order?

  1. Review / PR — the branch becomes a pull request that automated verification and human review both operate on.
  2. Merge — the merged branch becomes the environment’s source of truth.
  3. GitOps delivery — a reconciler applies the merged XR to the target cluster.
  4. Downstream Crossplane reconciliation — Crossplane composes the XR into concrete Kubernetes resources.

2. What is the single artifact that crosses the boundary from the Sandcastle into the outer loop?

The durable Git branch produced by the Sandcastle (and read by the previous lesson’s hand-off). Everything the outer loop does is derived from that branch or supplied by the environment repository. If any outer-loop stage needs to reach back into the Sandcastle, the hand-off did not capture enough on the branch.

3. Why do the outer loop’s guardrails belong outside the Sandcastle boundary?

Because the Sandcastle is bounded and disposable by design. Putting automated verification, review, or policy inside the Sandcastle would couple construction to delivery and delivery policy to construction — losing the separation that makes the Sandcastle safe to dispose of and the outer loop safe to change independently.

4. Which stage of the outer loop is the first one that actually touches a cluster?

Stage 3 — GitOps delivery. Stages 1 (review / PR) and 2 (merge) are entirely repo-shaped. The cluster only appears when the reconciler applies the merged XR, and Crossplane’s own reconciliation loop (stage 4) then composes it into concrete Kubernetes resources.

5. What honest prerequisites does the runnable outer-loop lab pull in that the hand-off lab did not?

  • A learner-controlled GitHub environment repository and an authenticated gh CLI — because stages 1–2 create a real branch, a real pull request, and a real merge commit that only make sense on a real hosted repo.
  • For stages 3–4, a Crossplane cluster (from the Hello Pico on Kubernetes lab) and either the flux CLI or kubectl — because those stages reconcile the merged XR onto a real cluster.

The lab keeps stages 1–2 runnable without a cluster (a verify.sh --skip-cluster mode exits cleanly with GitHub-only assertions) so learners can practise the review/merge half of the loop before setting up the reconciler half.

Next

Return to Part 3 or explore the Labs page.