The apex flip deadlocked prod's GitOps and this is the durable fix. The GitRepository pointed at a public hostname. The flip renamed prod's HTTPRoute hostnames, so that name stopped serving — but the HTTPRoute that would serve the new name lives in a DOWNSTREAM tier which cannot reconcile while the source is broken. Source down -> routes never rename -> source stays down. Observed live: srcReady=False, "unable to list remote for https://gitea.home.keithjackson.dev". Pointing at gitea.gitea.svc.cluster.local:3000 removes the cycle permanently: prod's GitOps no longer depends on public DNS, Cloudflare, its own Gateway, or ${BASE_DOMAIN}. No future domain change can sever prod from its own source. Plain http is deliberate: cluster-internal traffic to a ClusterIP, TLS terminates at the Gateway for external clients, the GitRepository has no secretRef (anonymous clone), and all secrets are SOPS-encrypted at rest regardless of transport. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>