Airbyte is an open-source data integration engine that helps you consolidate your data in your data warehouses, lakes and databases.

Airbyte

Is there a reliable way to update the source and destination definition yaml files and force a refresh without starting AirByte from scratch or upgrading?

Or are we expected to introduce new source and destination connectors through the API or UI once AirByte is running?

Have you looked into octavia-cli? Not sure if it answers what you're asking but maybe you can take look at judge for yourself.

<https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte/tree/master/octavia-cli>