A local cluster feels like rigor. Often it is a tax.

kind and minikube give you a Kubernetes API on the laptop. They do not give you an inner loop. Helm, kubectl, Skaffold, or Tilt still has to sit on top. Flisk's comparison doc draws the line in the place most tool pages smudge it: if your software talks to that API, you need the cluster. If your software is a service, a page, a worker, or an agent, the cluster is an operational target, not a dependency of the edit you are making.

When the cluster is mandatory

Refuse Flisk, and refuse "just use Compose," when the thing you are building is the cluster:

an operator, a CRD, or a reconciler

an admission webhook

ServiceAccount RBAC you must see fail

a Pod disruption budget, a NetworkPolicy, a CNI plugin

a service mesh

a Helm chart or Kustomize overlay whose job is to install cleanly

Those are not local-dev preferences. A Docker network will not grow a kube-apiserver because you wanted parity.…