A method for building, optimizing, and maintaining a computing infrastructure on a cloud computing environment is provided. A user provides a high-level declaration to a cloud environment operating system, specifying the details of the infrastructure that is intended to be built on the cloud. A cloud environment operating system converts the high level declaration to a lower level declaration and then to a series of instructions that can be executed by the cloud to build the desired infrastructure. The cloud environment operating system can also continuously monitor the infrastructure once it is built on the cloud. If the cloud environment operating system notices any discrepancies between the user's original specification and the infrastructure as built on the cloud, the operating system can work to modify the existing infrastructure on the cloud to conform to the infrastructure specified by a user.