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.

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

As a Claude Code plugin

One install gives an agent both the skill and the MCP server:

/plugin marketplace add AIops-tools/marketplace
/plugin install container-host-aiops@aiops-tools

The MCP server is fetched with uv and pinned to the package version this plugin declares, so an audit row can be traced back to the code that wrote it. Credentials are still configured with container-host-aiops init — see below.

As an OpenClaw plugin

The same bundle is published on ClawHub, where one install delivers the skill and its MCP server together:

openclaw plugins install clawhub:@zw008/container-host-aiops
openclaw skills info container-host-aiops          # expect: Visible to model: yes

Restart the OpenClaw gateway afterwards so it loads the plugin. The MCP server is fetched with uv, pinned to this exact release, so uvx has to be on PATH — without it the skill still installs but reports Visible to model: no. Credentials are configured exactly as below.

As a CLI or standalone MCP server

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

Where that password then lives: an exported variable is readable by every process this shell starts and is recorded by shell history. On a shared or long-lived host, prefer the interactive prompt, or inject it from a secret manager for the life of the one command that needs it.

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.