Why TDK CLI?
One service.json per service. TDK generates the Dockerfile, Traefik routing, and Tiltfile from it. You do not hand-write a docker-compose.yml or nginx.conf.
Local stack without Kubernetes. Services run on Docker and Tilt on your machine. You do not need a local cluster such as kind or minikube.
Hot reload while you code. Tilt live-updates the containers when files change.
Generated files you can check. tdk records the generated files and reports drift, so local config stays in sync. See generated files and drift checks.