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Introducing the Beta Launch of Docker’s AI Agent, Transforming Development Experiences

For years, Docker has been an essential partner for developers, empowering everyone from small startups to the world’s largest enterprises. Today, AI is transforming organizations across industries, creating opportunities for those who embrace it to gain a competitive edge. Yet, for many teams, the question of where to start and how to effectively integrate AI into daily workflows remains a challenge. True to its developer-first philosophy, Docker is here to bridge that gap.

We’re thrilled to introduce the beta launch of Docker AI Agent (also known as Project: Gordon)—an embedded, context-aware assistant seamlessly integrated into the Docker suite. Available within Docker Desktop and CLI, this innovative agent delivers tailored guidance for tasks like building and running containers, authoring Dockerfiles and Docker-specific troubleshooting—eliminating disruptive context-switching. By addressing challenges precisely when and where developers encounter them, Docker AI Agent ensures a smoother, more productive workflow.

As the AI Agent evolves, enterprise teams will unlock even greater capabilities, including customizable features that streamline collaboration, enhance security, and help developers work smarter. With the Docker AI Agent, we’re making Docker even easier and more effective to use than it has ever been — AI accessible, actionable, and indispensable for developers everywhere.

How Docker’s AI Agent Simplifies Development Challenges  

Developing in today’s fast-paced tech landscape is increasingly complex, with developers having to learn an ever growing number of tools, libraries and technologies.

By integrating a GenAI Agent into Docker’s ecosystem, we aim to provide developers with a powerful assistant that can help them navigate these complexities. 

The Docker AI Agent helps developers accelerate their work, providing real-time assistance, actionable suggestions, and automations that remove many of the manual tasks associated with containerized application development. Delivering the most helpful, expert-level guidance on Docker-related questions and technologies, Gordon serves as a powerful support system for developers, meeting them exactly where they are in their workflow. 

If you’re a developer who favors graphical interfaces, Docker Desktop AI UI will help you navigate container running issues, image size management and more generic Dockerfile oriented questions. If you’re a command line interface user, you can call, and share context with the agent directly in your favorite terminal.

So what can Docker’s AI Agent do today? 

We’re delivering an expert assistant for every Docker-related concept and technology, whether it’s getting started, optimizing an existing Dockerfile or Compose file, or understanding Docker technologies in general. With Docker AI Agent, you also have the ability to delegate actions while maintaining full control and review over the process.

A first example, if you want to run a container from an image, our agent can suggest the most appropriate docker run command tailored to your needs. This eliminates the guesswork or the need to search Docker Hub, saving you time and effort. The result combines a custom prompt, live data from Docker Hub, Docker container expertise and private usage insights, unique to Docker Inc.

We’ve intentionally designed the output to be concise and actionable, avoiding the overwhelming verbosity often associated with AI-generated commands. We also provide sources for most of the AI agent recommendations, pointing directly to our documentation website. Our goal is to continuously refine this experience, ensuring that Docker’s AI Agent always provides the best possible command based on your specific local context.

Beside helping you run containers, the Docker AI Agent can today:

Explain, Rate and optimize Dockerfile leveraging the latest version of Docker.

Help you run containers in an effective, concise way, leveraging the local context (checking port already used or volumes).

Answers any docker related questions with the latest version of our documentations for our whole tool suite, and as such is able to answer any kind of questions on Docker tools and technologies.

Containerize a software project helping you run your software in containers.

Helps on Docker related Github Actions.

Suggest fix when a container is failing to start in Docker Desktop.

Provides contextual help for containers, images and volumes.

Can augment its answer with per directory MCP servers (see doc).

For the node expert, in the above screenshot the AI is recommending node 20.12 which is not the latest version but the one the AI found in the package.json.

With every future version of Docker Desktop and thanks to the feedback that you provide, the agent will be able to do so much more in the future.

How can you try Docker AI Agent? 

This first beta release of Docker AI Agent is now progressively available for all signed-in users*. By default, the Docker AI agent is disabled. To enable it you will need to follow the steps below. Here’s how to get started:

Install or update to the latest release of Docker Desktop 4.38

Enable Docker AI into Docker Desktop Settings -> Features in Development

For the best experience, ensure the Docker terminal is enabled by going to Settings → General

Apply Changes 

* If you’re a business subscriber, your Administrator needs to enable the Docker AI Agent for the organization first. This can be done through the Settings Management. If this is your case, feel free to contact us through the support  for further information.

Docker Agent’s Vision for 2025

By 2025, we aim to expand the agent’s capabilities with features like customizing your experience with more context from your registry, enhanced GitHub Copilot integrations, and deeper presence across the development tools you already use. With regular updates and your feedback, Docker AI Agent is being built to become an indispensable part of your development process.

For now this beta is the start of an exciting evolution in how we approach developer productivity. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to shape a smarter, more streamlined way to build, secure, and ship applications. We want to hear from you, if you like or want more information you can contact us.

Learn more

Learn more about Docker’s AI Agent in on our docs 

Quelle: https://blog.docker.com/feed/

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Docker Desktop 4.38: New AI Agent, Multi-Node Kubernetes, and Bake in GA

At Docker, we’re committed to simplifying the developer experience and empowering enterprises to scale securely and efficiently. With the Docker Desktop 4.38 release, teams can look forward to improved developer productivity and enterprise governance. 

We’re excited to announce the General Availability of Bake, a powerful feature for optimizing build performance and multi-node Kubernetes testing to help teams “shift left.” We’re also expanding availability for several enterprise features designed to boost operational efficiency. And last but not least, Docker AI Agent (formerly Project: Agent Gordon) is now in Beta, delivering intelligent, real-time Docker-related suggestions across Docker CLI, Desktop, and Hub. It’s here to help developers navigate Docker concepts, fix errors, and boost productivity.

Docker’s AI Agent boosts developer productivity  

We’re thrilled to introduce Docker AI Agent (also known as Project: Agent Gordon) — an embedded, context-aware assistant seamlessly integrated into the Docker suite. Available within Docker Desktop and CLI, this innovative agent delivers real-time, tailored guidance for tasks like container management and Docker-specific troubleshooting — eliminating disruptive context-switching. Docker AI agent can be used for every Docker-related concept and technology, whether you’re getting started, optimizing an existing Dockerfile or Compose file, or understanding Docker technologies in general. By addressing challenges precisely when and where developers encounter them, Docker AI Agent ensures a smoother, more productive workflow. 

The first iteration of Docker’s AI Agent is now available in Beta for all signed-in users. The agent is disabled by default, so user activation is required. Read more about Docker’s New AI Agent and how to use it to accelerate developer velocity here. 

Figure 1: Asking questions to Docker AI Agent in Docker Desktop

Simplify build configurations and boost performance with Docker Bake

Docker Bake is an orchestration tool that simplifies and speeds up Docker builds. After launching as an experimental feature, we’re thrilled to make it generally available with exciting new enhancements.

While Dockerfiles are great for defining build steps, teams often juggle docker build commands with various options and arguments — a tedious and error-prone process. Bake changes the game by introducing a declarative file format that consolidates all options and image dependencies (also known as targets) in one place. No more passing flags to every build command! Plus, Bake’s ability to parallelize and deduplicate work ensures faster and more efficient builds.

Key benefits of Docker Bake

Simplicity: Abstract complex build configurations into one simple command.

Flexibility: Write build configurations in a declarative syntax, with support for custom functions, matrices, and more.

Consistency: Share and maintain build configurations effortlessly across your team.

Performance: Bake parallelizes multi-image workflows, enabling faster and more efficient builds.

Developers can simplify multi-service builds by integrating Bake directly into their Compose files — Bake supports Compose files natively. It enables easy, efficient building of multiple images from a single repository with shared configurations. Plus, it works seamlessly with Docker Build Cloud locally and in CI. With Bake-optimized builds as the foundation, developers can achieve more efficient Docker Build Cloud performance and faster builds.

Learn more about streamlining build configurations, boosting performance, and improving team workflows with Bake in our announcement blog. 

Shift Left with Multi-Node Kubernetes testing in Docker Desktop

In today’s complex production environments, “shifting left”  is more essential than ever. By addressing concerns earlier in the development cycle, teams reduce costs and simplify fixes, leading to more efficient workflows and better outcomes. That’s why we continue to bring new features and enhancements to integrate feedback directly into the developer’s inner loop

Docker Desktop now includes Multi-Node Kubernetes integration, enabling easier and extensive testing directly on developers’ machines. While single-node clusters allow for quick verification of app deployments, they fall short when it comes to testing resilience and handling the complex, unpredictable issues of distributed systems. To tackle this, we’re updating our Kubernetes distribution with kind — a lightweight, fast, and user-friendly solution for local test and multi-node cluster simulations.

Figure 2: Selecting Kubernetes version and cluster number for testing

Key Benefits:

Multi-node cluster support: Replicate a more realistic production environment to test critical features like node affinity, failover, and networking configurations.

Multiple Kubernetes versions: Easily test across different Kubernetes versions, which is a must for validating migration paths.

Up-to-date maintenance: Since kind is an actively maintained open-source project, developers can update to the latest version on demand without waiting for the next Docker Desktop release.

Head over to our documentation to discover how to use multi-node Kubernetes clusters for local testing and simulation.

General availability of administration features for Docker Business subscription

With the Docker Desktop 3.36 release, we introduced Beta enterprise admin tools to streamline administration, improve security, and enhance operational efficiency. And the feedback from our Early Access Program customers has been overwhelmingly positive. 

For instance, enforcing sign-in with macOS configuration files and across multiple organizations makes deployment easier and more flexible for large enterprises. Also, the PKG installer simplifies managing large-scale Docker Desktop deployments on macOS by eliminating the need to convert DMG files into PKG first.

Today, the features below are now available to all Docker Business customers.  

Enforce sign-in with macOS configuration profiles 

Enforce sign-in for more than one organization at a time 

Deploy Docker Desktop for Mac in bulk with the PKG installer 

Looking ahead, Docker is dedicated to continue expanding enterprise administration capabilities. Stay tuned for more announcements!

Wrapping up 

Docker Desktop 4.38 reinforces our commitment to simplifying the developer experience while equipping enterprises with robust tools. 

With Bake now in GA, developers can streamline complex build configurations into a single command. The new Docker AI Agent offers real-time, on-demand guidance within their preferred Docker tools. Plus, with Multi-node Kubernetes testing in Docker Desktop, they can replicate realistic production environments and address issues earlier in the development cycle. Finally, we made a few new admin tools available to all our Business customers, simplifying deployment, management, and monitoring. 

We look forward to how these innovations accelerate your workflows and supercharge your operations! 

Learn more

Authenticate and update to receive your subscription level’s newest Docker Desktop features.

Subscribe to the Docker Navigator Newsletter.

Learn about our sign-in enforcement options.

New to Docker? Create an account. 

Have questions? The Docker community is here to help.

Quelle: https://blog.docker.com/feed/

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Docker Bake is Now Generally Available in Docker Desktop 4.38!

We’re excited to announce the General Availability of Docker Bake with Docker Desktop 4.38! This powerful build orchestration tool takes the hassle out of managing complex builds and offers simplicity, flexibility, and performance for teams of all sizes.

What is Docker Bake?

Docker Bake is an orchestration tool that streamlines Docker builds, similar to how Compose simplifies managing runtime environments. With Bake, you can define build stages and deployment environments in a declarative file, making complex builds easier to manage. It also leverages BuildKit’s parallelization and optimization features to speed up build times.

While Dockerfiles are excellent for defining image build steps, teams often need to build multiple images and execute helper tasks like testing, linting, and code generation. Traditionally, this meant juggling numerous docker build commands with their own options and arguments – a tedious and error-prone process.

Bake changes the game by introducing a declarative file format that encapsulates all options and image dependencies, referred to as targets. Additionally, Bake’s ability to parallelize and deduplicate work ensures faster and more efficient builds.

Why should you use Bake?

Challenges with complex Docker Build configuration:

Managing long, complex build commands filled with countless flags and environment variables.

Tedious workflows for building multiple images.

Difficulty declaring builds for specific targets or environments.

Requires a script or 3rd-party tool to make things manageable

Docker Bake tackles these challenges with a better way to manage complex builds with a simple, declarative approach.

Key benefits of Docker Bake

Simplicity: Replace complex chains of Docker build commands and scripts with a single docker buildx bake command while maintaining clear, version-controlled configuration files that are easy to understand and modify.

Flexibility: Express sophisticated build logic through HCL syntax and matrix builds, enabling dynamic configurations that adapt to different environments and requirements while supporting custom functions for advanced use cases.

Consistency: Maintain standardized build configurations across teams and environments through version-controlled files and inheritance patterns, eliminating environment-specific build issues and reducing configuration drift.

Performance: Automatically parallelize independent builds and eliminate redundant operations through context deduplication and intelligent caching, dramatically reducing build times for complex multi-image workflows.

Figure 1: One simple Docker buildx bake command to replace all the flags and environment variables.

Use cases for Docker Bake

1. Monorepo and Image Bakery

Docker Bake can help developers efficiently manage and build multiple related Docker images from a single source repository. Plus, they can leverage shared configurations and automated dependency handling to enforce organizational standards.

Development Efficiency: Teams can maintain consistent build logic across dozens or hundreds of microservices in a single repository, reducing configuration drift and maintenance overhead.

Resource Optimization: Shared base images and contexts are automatically deduplicated, dramatically reducing build times and storage costs.

Standardization: Enforce organizational standards through inherited configurations, ensuring all services follow security, tagging, and testing requirements.

Change Management: A single source of truth for build configurations makes it easier to implement organization-wide changes like base image updates or security patches.

2. Compose users

Docker Bake provides seamless compatibility with existing docker-compose.yml files, allowing direct use of your current configurations. Existing Compose users are able to get started using Bake with minimal effort.

Gradual Adoption: Teams can incrementally adopt advanced build features while still leveraging their existing compose workflows and knowledge.

Development Consistency: Use the same configuration for both local development (via compose) and production builds (via Bake), eliminating “works on my machine” issues.

Enhanced Capabilities: Access powerful features like matrix builds and HCL expressions while maintaining compatibility with familiar compose syntax.

CI/CD Integration: Seamlessly integrate with existing CI/CD pipelines that already understand compose files while adding Bake’s advanced build capabilities.

3. Complex build configurations

Developers can use targets, groups, variables, functions, and matrix targets and many more tools in Bake to simplify their build configurations across projects and teams.

Cross-Platform Compatibility: Matrix builds enable teams to efficiently manage builds across multiple architectures, OS versions, and dependency combinations from a single configuration.

Dynamic Adaptation: HCL expressions allow builds to adapt to different environments, git branches, or CI variables without maintaining multiple configurations.

Build Optimization: Custom functions enable sophisticated logic for things like version calculation, tag generation, and conditional builds based on git history.

Quality Control: Variable validation and inheritance ensure consistent configuration across complex build scenarios, reducing errors and maintenance burden.

Scale Management: Groups and targets help organize large-scale build systems with dozens or hundreds of permutations, making them manageable and maintainable.

4. Docker Build Cloud

With Bake-optimized builds as the foundation, developers can achieve more efficient Docker Build Cloud performance and faster builds.

Enhanced Docker Build Cloud Performance: Instantly parallelize matrix builds across cloud infrastructure, turning hour-long build pipelines into minutes without managing build infrastructure.

Resource Optimization: Leverage Build Cloud’s distributed caching and deduplication to dramatically reduce bandwidth usage and build times, which is especially valuable for remote teams.

Cost Management: Save cost with DBC — Bake’s precise target definitions mean you only consume cloud resources for exactly what needs to be built.

Developer Experience: Teams can run complex multi-architecture builds without powerful local machines, enabling development from any device while maintaining build performance.

CI/CD Enhancement: Offload resource-intensive builds from CI runners to Build Cloud, reducing CI costs and queue times while improving reliability.

What’s New in Bake for GA?

Docker Bake has been an experimental feature for several years, allowing us to refine and improve it based on user feedback. So, there is already a strong set of ingredients that users love, such as targets and groups, variables, HCL Expression Support, inheritance capabilities, matrix targets, and additional contexts. With this GA release, Bake is now ready for production use, and we’ve added several enhancements to make it more efficient, secure, and easier to use:

Deduplicated Context Transfers: Significantly speeds up build pipelines by eliminating redundant file transfers when multiple targets share the same build context.

Entitlements: Enhances security and resource management by providing fine-grained control over what capabilities and resources builders can access during the build process.

Composable Attributes: Simplifies configuration management by allowing teams to define reusable attribute sets that can be mixed, matched, and overridden across different targets.

Variable Validation: Prevents wasted time and resources by catching configuration errors before the actual build process begins.

Deduplicate context transfers

When you build targets concurrently using groups, build contexts are loaded independently for each target. If the same context is used by multiple targets in a group, that context is transferred once for each time it’s used. This can significantly impact build time, depending on your build configuration.

Previously, the workaround required users to define a named context that loads the context files and then have each target reference the named context. But with Bake, this will be handled automatically now.

Bake can automatically deduplicate context transfers from targets sharing the same context. When you build targets concurrently using groups, build contexts are loaded independently for each target. If the same context is used by multiple targets in a group, that context is transferred once for each time it’s used. This more efficient approach leads to much faster build time. 

Read more about how to speed up your build time in our docs. 

Entitlements

Bake now includes entitlements to control access to privileged operations, aligning with Build. This prevents unintended side effects and security risks. If Bake detects a potential issue — like a privileged access request or an attempt to access files outside the current directory — the build will fail unless explicitly allowed.

To be consistent, the Bake command now supports the –allow=ENTITLEMENT flag to grant access to additional entitlements. The following entitlements are currently supported for Bake.

Build equivalents

–allow network.host — Allows executions with host networking.

–allow security.insecure — Allows executions without sandbox. (i.e. —privileged)

File system: Grant filesystem access for builds that need access files outside the working directory. This will impact context, output, cache-from, cache-to, dockerfile, secret

–allow fs=<path|*> — Grant read and write access to files outside the working directory.

–allow fs.read=<path|*> — Grant read access to files outside the working directory.

–allow fs.write=<path|*> — Grant write access to files outside the working directory.

ssh

–allow ssh —– Allows exposing SSH agent.

Composable attributes

Several attributes previously had to be defined in CSV (e.g. type=provenance,mode=min). These were challenging to read and couldn’t be easily overridden. The following can now be defined as structured objects:

target “app” {
attest = [
{ type = “provenance”, mode = “max” },
{ type = “sbom”, disabled = true}
]

cache-from = [
{ type = “registry”, ref = “user/app:cache” },
{ type = “local”, src = “path/to/cache”}
]

cache-to = [
{ type = “local”, dest = “path/to/cache” },
]

output = [
{ type = “oci”, dest = “../out.tar” },
{ type = “local”, dest=”../out”}
]

secret = [
{ id = “mysecret”, src = “path/to/secret” },
{ id = “mysecret2″, env = “TOKEN” },
]

ssh = [
{ id = “default” },
{ id = “key”, paths = [”path/to/key”] },
]
}

As such, the attributes are now composable. Teams can mix, match, and override attributes across different targets which simplifies configuration management.

target “app-dev” {
attest = [
{ type = “provenance”, mode = “min” },
{ type = “sbom”, disabled = true}
]
}

target “app-prod” {
inherits = [”app-dev”]

attest = [
{ type = “provenance”, mode = “max” },
]
}

Variable validation

Bake now supports validation for variables similar to Terraform to help developers catch and resolve configuration errors early. The GA for Bake also supports the following use cases.

Basic validation

To verify that the value of a variable conforms to an expected type, value range, or other condition, you can define custom validation rules using the validation block.

variable “FOO” {
validation {
condition = FOO != “”
error_message = “FOO is required.”
}
}

target “default” {
args = {
FOO = FOO
}
}

Multiple validations

To evaluate more than one condition, define multiple validation blocks for the variable. All conditions must be true.

variable “FOO” {
validation {
condition = FOO != “”
error_message = “FOO is required.”
}
validation {
condition = strlen(FOO) > 4
error_message = “FOO must be longer than 4 characters.”
}
}

target “default” {
args = {
FOO = FOO
}
}

Dependency on other variables

You can reference other Bake variables in your condition expression, enabling validations that enforce dependencies between variables. This ensures that dependent variables are set correctly before proceeding.

variable “FOO” {}
variable “BAR” {
validation {
condition = FOO != “”
error_message = “BAR requires FOO to be set.”
}
}

target “default” {
args = {
BAR = BAR
}
}

New Bake options

In addition to updating the Bake configuration, we’ve added a new –list option. Previously, if you were unfamiliar with a project or wanted a reminder of the supported targets and variables, you would have to read through the file. Now, the list option will allow you to quickly query a list of them. It also supports the JSON format option if you need programmatic access.

List target

Quickly get a list of the targets available in your Bake configuration.

docker buildx bake –list targets

docker buildx bake –list type=targets,format=json

List variables

Get a list of variables available for your Bake configuration.

docker buildx bake –list variables

docker buildx bake –list type=variables,format=json

These improvements build on a powerful feature set, ensuring Bake is both reliable and future-ready.

Get started with Docker Bake

Ready to simplify your builds? Update to Docker Desktop 4.38 today and start using Bake. With its declarative syntax and advanced features, Docker Bake is here to help you build faster, more efficiently, and with less effort.

Explore the documentation to learn how to create your first Bake file and experience the benefits of streamlined builds firsthand.

Let’s bake something amazing together!

Quelle: https://blog.docker.com/feed/