podman

Use Podman for local container operations: building images, running containers, compose, logs, volumes, and networking.

Verify Installation

Always confirm podman is available before running commands. If not found, tell the user and stop.

podman --version

Build

Build an image from a Containerfile or Dockerfile.

podman build --tag <image>:<tag> <context-path>

# Examples
podman build --tag myapp:latest .
podman build --tag myapp:v1.0 --file Containerfile.dev .
podman build --no-cache --tag myapp:latest .

Run

Run a container from an image.

podman run --interactive --tty ubuntu:latest /bin/bash
podman run --detach --publish 8080:80 --name webserver nginx:latest
podman run --rm --volume $(pwd):/app myapp:latest
podman run --env DATABASE_URL=postgres://... myapp:latest

Logs

When the user asks about container logs, spawn a subagent to analyze them. This keeps the main context clean. Pass the user's original question to the subagent. Give the subagent these instructions:

1. Fetch logs using podman logs --tail 200 <container> (or podman compose logs <service>). Increase --tail if the user asks for more history.
2. Scan for: errors, warnings, stack traces, repeated patterns, and timing anomalies.
3. Summarize findings: error/warning counts, notable patterns, most recent errors with timestamps.
4. Answer this specific question: [USER'S ORIGINAL QUESTION]

Compose

Run multi-container applications.

podman compose up --detach
podman compose down
podman compose logs --follow
podman compose ps

Container Management

podman ps                  # list running containers
podman ps --all            # list all containers
podman stop <container>    # stop a container
podman rm <container>      # remove a container
podman images              # list images
podman rmi <image>         # remove an image

Networking

podman network ls
podman network create <name>
podman network inspect <name>
podman network rm <name>

Volumes

podman volume ls
podman volume create <name>
podman volume inspect <name>
podman volume rm <name>

Docker Compatibility

• Rootless by default: runs containers without root privileges
• Daemonless: no background daemon; each command is a direct process
• CLI-compatible: most docker commands work with podman
• You can alias docker to podman for drop-in compatibility

Examples

User says	Action
"What version of podman is installed?"	Run podman --version
"Build this container"	Find Containerfile/Dockerfile, run podman build
"Build and run this container"	Build then run with sensible defaults
"Show me the logs from the nginx container"	Spawn log-analysis subagent
"Stop all running containers"	podman stop each, or podman compose down
"Clean up old images"	podman rmi unused images