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 : 

# 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 (or podman compose logs ). 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     # stop a container
podman rm       # remove a container
podman images              # list images
podman rmi          # remove an image

Networking

podman network ls
podman network create 
podman network inspect 
podman network rm 

Volumes

podman volume ls
podman volume create 
podman volume inspect 
podman volume rm 

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 |

Source & license

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

• Author: jarrettmeyer
• Source: jarrettmeyer/skills
• License: MIT

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