Thanks for the feedback. I agree your setup sounds solid.

What you're describing - different values, Argo apps per branch, pipelines that create and clean up - absolutely works. In my experience though, getting to that point involves a lot of work: Argo setup, application generation per branch, DNS and ingress wiring, and ongoing maintenance. It's reliable once built, but non-trivial to design and keep running.

The scope of what I'm trying to solve is narrower. In my case, Helm chart changes (often from external contributors) were hard to review because validating them meant manually standing up environments or spinning up short-lived clusters. Many reviewers couldn't realistically run the pipeline themselves, so reviews often stalled. That was the core motivation.

This isn't aimed at teams that already have a mature GitOps setup like yours — I agree Chart Preview probably won't add much value there. It's for teams that don't have that infrastructure yet, or don't want to invest in building and maintaining it, and want to get to the same outcome with less effort.

I appreciate you taking the time to describe your approach — it's a good reference point for where many teams eventually end up.