// the find
argoproj/argocd-example-apps
Example Apps to Demonstrate Argo CD
The official Argo CD example apps repo — a collection of toy deployments covering every major config format ArgoCD supports: plain YAML, Helm, Kustomize, Jsonnet, and ApplicationSets. It exists purely as a learning sandbox and is actively synced against the real cd.apps.argoproj.io instance, so the examples are genuinely working, not hypothetical. Target audience is anyone getting started with ArgoCD or GitOps who wants a concrete repo to fork and experiment against.
Each config approach (Helm, Kustomize, Jsonnet, raw YAML) gets its own isolated directory, so you can compare them side-by-side without context switching. The ApplicationSet examples cover every generator type including the intentionally-broken Git generator, which is unusually honest for official docs. Blue-green and sync-waves examples are wired to Argo Rollouts, showing the actual integration rather than just the ArgoCD side. The live sync badges on the README show real-time health of each example against a production ArgoCD instance — you know immediately if an example is broken.
Everything uses the same guestbook toy app, which means you learn ArgoCD mechanics but nothing about structuring a real multi-service deployment. There are no examples covering RBAC, SSO, or multi-cluster setups — the parts that actually cause pain in production. The Jsonnet examples have no explanation of why you'd choose Jsonnet over Helm or Kustomize, leaving the reader to infer from YAML alone. The plugins/nix example is a stub with no README explanation, so it's genuinely unclear what it's supposed to demonstrate.