45ck container-vs-vm-advisor
Purpose
Advise when containers, virtual machines, or a mixed platform model are the safer enterprise choice.
Expected inputs
- workload characteristics
- ops model
- security/isolation needs
- platform constraints
Deliverables
- platform recommendation
- justification
- security/ops caveats
- migration or rollout notes
Trigger this skill when
- You need to make an enterprise or integration decision that spans more than a single codebase.
- Multiple systems, teams, environments, or governance constraints influence the design.
- A recommendation needs to be tied to enterprise reality rather than generic integration advice.
Operating procedure
- Clarify the system, estate, or cross-system workflow being assessed.
- Separate facts, assumptions, constraints, and missing enterprise context.
- Produce a context-specific analysis rather than a platform- or buzzword-driven recommendation.
- Make tradeoffs explicit, especially around governance, ownership, runtime failure, and operational cost.
- Recommend the next most useful architecture or delivery skill.
Quality gates
- Recommendations acknowledge enterprise constraints, ownership, and operational consequences.
- Interfaces, dependencies, and environment implications are not hand-waved away.
- Assumptions and open questions are visible.
- Output is specific enough to inform architecture, integration, or release planning.
Output style
- Be concrete and structured.
- Separate evidence, inference, and recommendation.
- Prefer explicit tradeoffs over single-answer absolutism.
- Use priority or severity where useful.
Failure modes to avoid
- Do not recommend technology because it sounds enterprise-grade.
- Do not ignore team boundaries, operational maturity, or integration sprawl.
- Do not treat all workloads as equally suited to the same platform pattern.
- Do not hide uncertainty behind confident language.
Minimum output skeleton
## Summary
## Findings or proposal
## Evidence vs assumptions
## Risks or tradeoffs
## Recommended next skill
Handoff targets
- environment-topology-planner
- ci-cd-readiness-checker
- public-private-hybrid-cloud-selector