Podman Skill | Agent Skills

Podman

Rootless, daemonless container engine. Commands mirror Docker — substitute podman for docker.

Container Lifecycle

podman run -d --name my-app alpine sleep 1000   # Run detached
podman ps -a                                     # List all (including stopped)
podman logs my-app                               # View logs
podman exec my-app ls /app                       # Exec command
podman stop my-app && podman rm my-app           # Stop and remove

Non-interactive usage: Always use -d for long-running services. For interactive sessions: tmux new -d 'podman run -it --name my-app alpine sh'. Use -f with rm, rmi, prune to skip prompts.

Images

podman pull alpine:latest
podman build -t my-image .          # Reads Containerfile (or Dockerfile)
podman images                       # List local images
podman rmi my-image                 # Remove

Pods — Shared Network Namespace

Pods group containers so they communicate over localhost (no network config needed between them):

podman pod create --name my-stack -p 8080:80
podman run -d --pod my-stack --name web nginx
podman run -d --pod my-stack --name api my-api-image
# web and api share localhost — api reaches nginx at localhost:80
podman pod ps

Networking

podman network create my-network
podman run -d --network my-network --name web nginx
podman network connect my-network existing-container

Secrets

echo "my-secret-value" | podman secret create my-secret -
podman run --secret my-secret,type=env,target=MY_SECRET alpine env

Health Checks

podman run -d --health-cmd "curl -f http://localhost/ || exit 1" \
  --health-interval 30s --health-retries 3 --name web nginx
podman inspect web --format '{{.State.Health.Status}}'

Systemd Integration (Quadlet)

Declare containers as systemd units for auto-start and management:

# ~/.config/containers/systemd/my-app.container
[Container]
Image=nginx:latest
PublishPort=8080:80

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now my-app   # Quadlet auto-generates the service

Compose and Kubernetes

# Docker Compose compatibility
podman compose up -d
podman compose down

# Generate/play Kubernetes manifests
podman generate kube my-pod > pod.yaml
podman kube play pod.yaml
podman kube down pod.yaml

Cleanup

podman system prune -f    # Remove stopped containers, unused images, networks
podman system df           # Show disk usage

Constraints

Rootless by default: Runs as current user. Complex workloads (e.g., binding to ports < 1024) require subuid/subgid configuration or --userns=keep-id
No daemon: Unlike Docker, podman has no background daemon — containers are managed as direct child processes
Containerfile preferred: Use Containerfile (not Dockerfile) as the default build file name — podman checks for both but Containerfile is the OCI convention

Agent Skills: Podman

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