ArgoCD may be unnecessary for effective GitOps with Git and Docker Compose

Every time someone starts self-hosting - a homelab, a few internal services for a small team - they tend to fall down the same rabbit hole: should I run K8s? And if I run K8s, do I need ArgoCD or Flux for GitOps? Two weeks later they've read a pile of Helm charts and CRDs and still haven't deployed