I built a simple prototype of a self-service platform using automation api... for those interested, check it out here: https://medium.com/@danfhern/self-service-platform-development-made-easy-with-pulumi-4e2cf150e93c

This is amazing!

Agreed, super cool. I've always wanted to make it easy for devs to experiment in production-like environments. I could imagine something like this for playign with dev/staging environments. Combined with Policy As Code it seems like you could give devs freedom to experimetn while making sure costs don't crazy and security properties are maintained.

Yep, exactly, lots of possibilities!