Container Update Advisor

Check running Docker containers for newer image versions and generate a prioritized update report. Fetches release notes and flags breaking changes vs safe updates. Use when asked about container updates, docker updates, outdated containers, update check, what needs updating, are my containers up to date, or any request to review Docker image versions.

Check all running Docker containers against Docker Hub for newer versions, fetch changelogs, and output a prioritized markdown report with risk flags.

Scripts

All scripts live in scripts/ relative to this file. Run from that directory.

Script	Purpose
scan_containers.py	List running containers + image tags (outputs JSON)
check_updates.py	Query Docker Hub for newer versions (stdin/file → JSON)
fetch_changelog.py	Fetch GitHub release notes for updated images (stdin/file → JSON)
format_report.py	Render prioritized markdown report (stdin/file → stdout)

Full Pipeline

python3 scan_containers.py \
  | python3 check_updates.py \
  | python3 fetch_changelog.py \
  | python3 format_report.py

To save intermediate output for debugging, pass each script's output as a file argument to the next:

python3 scan_containers.py > /tmp/c.json
python3 check_updates.py /tmp/c.json > /tmp/u.json
python3 fetch_changelog.py /tmp/u.json > /tmp/ch.json
python3 format_report.py /tmp/ch.json

Risk Assessment Logic

• Major version bump → 🔴 review first
• Minor version bump → 🔴 review first (may have API changes)
• Changelog mentions "breaking" → 🔴 review first
• Patch bump only, no breaking keywords → 🟢 safe to update

What Gets Skipped

• Containers using latest tag (no version to compare)
• Digest-pinned images (sha256:... tags)
• Non-Docker Hub registries (GHCR, ECR, etc.)
• Private images (401/403 → skipped gracefully)
• Non-semver tags (e.g. alpine, focal, slim)

GitHub Token (Optional)

Set GITHUB_TOKEN env var to increase GitHub API from 60 → 5,000 req/hr:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_yourtoken

Reference

See references/setup-guide.md for scheduling, rate limits, and how image matching works.