I'd go with 3: 1. First try to think through a Kubernetes-native development workflow. Some tools here would that could be helpful are DevSpace (personal favorite), Tilt, or Skaffold or you could use Okteto for something full stack potentially. Alternatively you could use Minikube or Kind locally but these are more local adaptions rather than K8s/cloud-native. 2. Create a cluster on GKE. 3. Figure out how you want to do CI in your workflow. 4. Profit?