Editing live Kubernetes objects in the cluster without version control is the practice that should be avoided when launching a cloud native service to a Kubernetes cluster for a small software firm.

This approach leads to configuration drift and it removes an auditable history of changes which makes rollbacks and reproducing environments difficult. Small teams benefit from reproducible, reviewable changes and from automation that ties deployments to version controlled artifacts, and live in cluster edits bypass those safety nets.

Automating builds and rollouts with Cloud Build is not something to avoid because automating the pipeline reduces human error and ensures consistent artifacts and controlled rollouts.

Adopting a GitOps model for declarative application delivery is not something to avoid because GitOps keeps the desired state in version control and enables reconciliation, auditing, and reproducible deployments which are valuable for small firms.

Using Kubernetes native resources such as Deployments and StatefulSets for workload management is not something to avoid because those controllers provide built in lifecycle, update, and scaling semantics that are the correct primitives for managing stateless and stateful workloads in Kubernetes.

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