Epic Goal

Evaluate an experimental Prow pipeline that uses Helm based deployment instead of in test logic, likely to become the standard path.

Why is this important?

• Unifies dev workflows, pipelines, and Validated Patterns around the same deployment method

• Reduces silos since fixes and improvements in charts benefit all consumers

• Increases speed since any deployment fix automatically propagates to the whole team

Scenarios

• Pipeline deploys components via Helm before tests run. Tests execute with deployment skipped and focus only on validation.

Acceptance Criteria 

Helm or ArgoCD based deploy step is integrated in Prow; Tests run successfully with SKIP_DEPLOYMENT=true

Additional context:

• Since this is an experimental pipeline, current jobs can still run with SKIP_DEPLOYMENT=false and use the existing method

• This does not replace tests that explicitly validate deployment and undeployment steps