Container Host AIops

Disclaimer: Community-maintained open-source project. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Docker, Inc., Portainer.io, or any container-platform vendor. "Docker", "Portainer" and all product/trademark names belong to their respective owners. MIT licensed.

Governed AI-ops for non-orchestrator container hosts — the Docker Engine API (over a local unix socket or a TCP host), Portainer (its management API, which also proxies Docker), and Podman (a rootful/rootless service socket speaking the Docker-compatible API plus libpod-native endpoints) — with a built-in governance harness: a unified audit log over both MCP and CLI, a runaway/budget safety guard, and undo-token recording. It records every operation; it does not decide whether a write is permitted — that is the agent's or the account's call. Multi-platform by construction: a registry keyed by platform means a per-target platform field (docker / portainer / podman) selects the API shape, and another host family could be added later without touching the ops/CLI/MCP layers. Exercised against a live Docker Engine 27.5.1 daemon (doctor, overview, the three flagship analyses, and a governed stop_container with audit + undo recorded); the Portainer and Podman API paths are covered by the mock suite only.

What it does

Three flagship signature analyses, plus the guarded reads and writes around them:

• Restart-loop RCA — inspect containers for restart count + exit code, flag the crash-looping ones (restartCount over threshold, or restarting/dead, or a non-zero exit), and map each to a likely cause + action from the exit code (137 OOM/SIGKILL, 143 SIGTERM, 139 segfault, 127 bad entrypoint, …), with a tail of logs. Every ranking carries its numbers, not a black-box verdict.

• Resource-pressure analysis — a one-shot CPU%/memory% sample per running container vs its configured limits, flagging each "near" (≥ 80% of a threshold) or "over", with a recommendation (raise a limit, set a missing memory limit, scale out).

• Image & volume bloat — dangling images + dangling volumes + build cache from system/df, totalled into prune candidates with reclaimable bytes.

Related MCP server: observability-aiops

What works

• CLI (container-host-aiops ...): init, overview, container, image, volume, network, system, stack, pod, analyze, manage, secret, doctor, mcp.

• MCP server (container-host-aiops mcp or container-host-aiops-mcp): 38 tools (29 read, 9 write), every one wrapped with the bundled @governed_tool harness.

• Connection layer: Docker over a unix socket (httpx.HTTPTransport(uds=...)) or a TCP host; Portainer over HTTPS with an X-API-Key token that also proxies the Docker API of a managed endpoint; Podman over its rootful/rootless service socket (autodetected: $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/podman/podman.sock first, then /run/podman/podman.sock) speaking the Docker-compat layer (paths reused wholesale) plus libpod-native endpoints. A local Docker/Podman socket needs no secret — the socket's file permissions are the boundary.

• Encrypted credentials: the Portainer API token lives in an encrypted store ~/.container-host-aiops/secrets.enc (Fernet + scrypt) — never plaintext on disk. Unlock with a master password from CONTAINER_HOST_AIOPS_MASTER_PASSWORD (MCP/CI) or an interactive prompt (CLI).

• Reversibility: mutating writes fetch the real before-state first and record a faithful inverse (stop↔start; update_container restores prior CPU/memory limits). Irreversible ops (remove_container, prune_images, prune_volumes, recreate_stack) capture the before-state for audit but declare no undo.

• Safety: every state-changing CLI op supports --dry-run and requires double confirmation; every write MCP tool takes a dry_run preview — and prune previews list what would be removed + reclaimable bytes before doing it.

What this tool does, and does not, decide

It delivers container-host operations — reads and writes — accurately and efficiently, and records every one of them. It does not decide whether a write is allowed to happen. That is the agent's judgement, or the permission of the account you connect it with: point it at a Docker socket mounted read-only, or a Portainer account without write scope, and the writes fail at the server — the place that actually owns the permission.

So there is no read-only switch, no policy file, no approval gate to configure. The one thing the tool guarantees is that nothing is silent: every call, over MCP and over the CLI alike, lands an audit row in ~/.container-host-aiops/audit.db, and destructive writes still capture their before-state and record an inverse where one exists.

Each tool declares a risk_level, kept in agreement with its [READ]/[WRITE] documentation tag by a test, and carried into the audit row as a descriptive tier — so a reviewer can see at a glance that a row was a high-risk delete. It is a label, not a gate.

Capability matrix (38 MCP tools)

The three analyses accept injected data for offline analysis, or pull live from a configured target. list_endpoints/list_stacks/stack_detail require a portainer target; list_compose_stacks (Compose project rollup by the com.docker.compose.project label, with per-stack health) works on docker or podman; list_pods requires a podman target (Docker/Portainer have no pod concept).

Platform support matrix

Quick start

uv tool install container-host-aiops          # or: pipx install container-host-aiops
container-host-aiops init                      # wizard: add a Docker/Podman socket or Portainer target
container-host-aiops doctor                    # verify config, secrets, connectivity
container-host-aiops overview                  # one-shot host health
container-host-aiops analyze restart-loop      # crash-looping containers + cause/action
container-host-aiops container list --running  # running containers

Run as an MCP server (stdio):

export CONTAINER_HOST_AIOPS_MASTER_PASSWORD=...   # only needed for Portainer targets
container-host-aiops-mcp

Governance

Every operation — MCP and CLI — passes through the bundled @governed_tool harness. It records; it does not authorize (see above).

• Audit — every call (params, result, status, duration, risk tier, and any operator-supplied approver/rationale) is logged to ~/.container-host-aiops/audit.db (relocatable via CONTAINER_HOST_AIOPS_HOME). The CLI writes the same row the MCP path does — there is no unaudited entry point.

• Runaway guard — a safety backstop, not an authorization gate: the same call hammered in a tight loop trips a circuit breaker so a stuck agent can't burn unbounded calls/time. Disable with CONTAINER_HOST_RUNAWAY_MAX=0; optional hard ceilings via CONTAINER_HOST_MAX_TOOL_CALLS / CONTAINER_HOST_MAX_TOOL_SECONDS.

• Undo recording — reversible writes record an inverse descriptor built from the fetched before-state.

• Risk tier — a descriptive label on the audit row derived from risk_level; it gates nothing.

Scope

This is the container-host member of the AIops-tools family (governed AI-ops with audit + budget + undo), for single-host Docker / Portainer / Podman. It is deliberately NOT for a cluster orchestrator, a hypervisor, a storage appliance, a backup product, or OT / industrial edge — those are separate tools/lines.

Missing a capability?

Coverage is intentionally a curated subset of the Docker Engine + Portainer + Podman (libpod) APIs. Missing a call, or want another container host family? Open an issue or PR — contributions welcome.

Verification status

• Docker — exercised against a live Docker Engine 27.5.1 daemon: doctor and overview connected over the local socket, the restart-loop and image/volume bloat analyses were run against real crash-looping containers and real reclaimable data, and a governed stop_container wrote a row to the audit DB and recorded a working undo descriptor.

• Portainer and Podman — mock-validated only. Those API paths are modelled from each project's public API shape and have not been exercised against a live server.

• The full checklist — what the mock suite guarantees, what the Docker run already satisfied, and what a Portainer/Podman run still has to prove — is in docs/VERIFICATION.md. container-host-aiops doctor is the fastest live check on any platform.