YAML or JSON — Which Format Should You Use?

JSON is strict, ubiquitous in APIs, and easy for machines to parse. YAML is human-friendly for config files but has more foot-guns (implicit typing, anchors).

Rule of thumb

• Wire formats / public APIs → JSON.
• Human-edited config (Kubernetes, CI) → YAML, with linters.

Round-trip and validate documents with the JSON ⇄ YAML tool and pretty-print with the JSON Formatter.