Patroni is a tool that provides automated failover and high availability for PostgreSQL clusters. It implements the "bot" pattern where a separate process called a "bot" manages PostgreSQL and communicates with a distributed configuration store (DCS) like Etcd to elect a leader node and facilitate failover if the leader fails. The document provides an overview of Patroni and demonstrates setting up a basic 3 node Patroni cluster using Docker Compose. It shows the cluster successfully handling an automated failover when the leader node is killed.