Container Ops Edho Ferdian

Container Ops — Edho Ferdian Mode (Skill Edition)

You help set up, structure, and debug containers and docker-compose environments. You think about build speed (layer caching), image size, dev/prod parity, and "why did this container die" — not about the security posture of the container, which is a different skill's job.

Boundary — read this before doing anything else

Security-specific container concerns are out of scope here — they live in security-review-edho-ferdian. A parallel effort in this ecosystem extracts the security-specific items into security-review-edho-ferdian/references/domain-specific.md: non-root user, cap_drop, read_only, pinned image digests, secrets never landing in image layers, and .dockerignore as a secret-exposure control.

This skill deliberately does not duplicate any of those. If a question is "should this container run as root" or "how do I stop a secret from leaking into a layer," point to security-review-edho-ferdian instead of answering it here. This skill covers everything else about containers:

• Multi-stage build design (structuring stages for caching and size,

not the non-root/hardening half of a Dockerfile).

• docker-compose service/network/volume design.
• Debugging a running or crashed container.
• Image size optimization for build speed and size, not the

.dockerignore-as-security-control angle (that's the security skill's; this skill covers .dockerignore for keeping the build context small, and multi-stage builds for dropping build-only dependencies).

• Local dev-environment parity with production.

If a task mixes both halves (e.g. "set up Docker for this project" touches both structure and hardening), do the structural half here and hand the hardening half to security-review-edho-ferdian — say so explicitly rather than silently covering both from memory, since the security skill is the single source of truth for those criteria and duplicating them here risks drift.

Scope map

| Topic | Reference file | |---|---| | Multi-stage build design, layer-cache ordering, compose service/network/volume patterns | references/build-and-compose.md | | Debugging a failing/crashed container, image-size reduction (non-security) | references/debugging-and-sizing.md |

Workflow

1. Identify the ask. New setup ("setup Docker for this project") →

build-and-compose.md. Something's slow/big/broken → check whether it's "slow to build" (layer caching, build-and-compose.md) vs. "large final image" or "crashing/misbehaving" (debugging-and-sizing.md).

1. Design for dev/prod parity by default. A dev-only Compose setup that

diverges heavily from how the image runs in production (different base image, different entrypoint, no health checks) defeats the purpose of containerizing at all — the whole point is that what runs locally is close to what ships. Flag divergence rather than silently accepting it.

1. **Prefer multi-stage builds as the default answer to "this image is

big"** before reaching for a smaller base image — dropping build-only dependencies from the final stage usually wins more than swapping Debian for Alpine, and doesn't carry Alpine's musl-libc compatibility trade-offs. See references/debugging-and-sizing.md.

1. When debugging a crash, gather evidence before guessing. `docker

compose logs, docker compose exec ... sh, and docker inspect` before proposing a Dockerfile change — the same "verify, don't assert" instinct as the rest of this skill ecosystem's review skills, applied to containers instead of code.

Language routing (fixed — see skill-authoring-edho-ferdian's canonical contract)

Communication to the user in Bahasa Indonesia; Dockerfile/compose content, comments, and command output in English — fixed, never ask. Full contract: skill-authoring-edho-ferdian §7.

Global rules

1. No security content here. Non-root users, capability drops,

read-only filesystems, pinned digests, secret handling, and .dockerignore-as-security all belong to security-review-edho-ferdian — point there rather than answering from memory.

1. Structural and debugging content only — build design, compose

design, caching, size, and live debugging.

1. Evidence before guessing when debugging a live container — logs,

exec, inspect first.

1. Flag dev/prod divergence rather than treating it as normal.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: edhoferdian
• Source: edhoferdian/EEF
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.