Isn’t a source of truth overkill for a small network?

That reputation comes from self-hosting NetBox, not from the idea itself. Knowing what’s where and what depends on what is genuinely useful at 15 devices. What makes it feel like overkill for a small shop is the upkeep — standing up Postgres and Redis, babysitting upgrades, managing plugins. Palpabl is the managed version, so you get the model without the operational tax that made it feel like overkill in the first place.