Solved: Network automation seems a lot like stitching APIs together

🚀 Executive Summary TL;DR: Network automation often feels like brittle API stitching due to multi-vendor complexity, lack of a centralized Source of Truth, and reliance on imperative scripting. Solutions range from adopting smarter, idempotent tools like Ansible to building a centralized abstraction layer with a SoT like NetBox, ultimately evolving towards a unified platform mindset for full infrastructure abstraction. 🎯 Key Takeaways Multi-vendor environments create significant challenges due to disparate APIs, authentication methods, and data models, requiring complex ‘glue code’ to integrate. Transitioning from imperative scripting (step-by-step instructions) to a declarative model (defining desired end state) with tools like Ansible drastically improves automation robustness and safety by handling state and failing loudly. Implementing a centralized Source of Truth (SoT) like NetBox or Nautobot decouples intent from implementation, allowing an automation orchestrator to translate h