-and-api-versions>Feature stability and API versions</h2><p>Declarative APIs, such as those used by Kubernetes and Istio, decouple the <em>description</em> of a resource from the <em>implementation</em> that acts on it.</p><p><a href=/v1.22/docs/releases/feature-stages/>Istio&rsquo;s feature phase definitions</a> describe how a stable feature — one that is deemed ready for production use at any scale, and comes with a formal deprecation policy — should be matched with a <code>v1</code> API. We are now m