Container Image
Immutable read-only tarball bundle containing root filesystem layers, binary dependencies, and OCI runtime metadata.
Mechanism & Definition
An immutable, static artifact comprising stacked read-only rootfs layers and a JSON configuration spec. Each build instruction creates a content-addressable layer stored via SHA256 hashes. At runtime, the container engine overlays these read-only layers with a transient read-write layer via a copy-on-write filesystem.