Hey all…sharing an update on Atomic Image Builder, a small (kinda) guided TUI I’ve been building for creating and updating GitHub-backed bootc image repos (Universal Blue + Fedora Atomic). It walks you through picking a base image, adding packages/services/COPRs, wires up GitHub Actions + cosign signing, and pushes a real repo that builds your image for you. It can even scan your current system if you have a load of layered packages..this tool will SAVE YOU from that! 
When making your repo, you can choose from the official Universal Blue template or Bluebuild.
Standard disclaimer since I’m posting this here: this is an independent, third-party project — not affiliated with or endorsed by Universal Blue or Fedora. It’s 0.9 beta and still getting exercised, so treat it accordingly.
## What’s new the last couple of days
Runs as a container now — `ghcr.io/danathar/atomic-image-builder`, so you don’t need gum/gh/cosign/etc. installed locally at all. A small wrapper script (`aib`) handles forwarding your `gh` login and your host’s `rpm-ostree` state into the container for you. Plain `podman run` and a distrobox recipe both work too.
First run is smoother — if you’re not logged into GitHub yet, the app now walks you through gh auth login right there instead of just telling you to go run a command yourself, and it wires up git’s credential helper automatically afterward so the first push doesn’t fail.
Fixed a real repo-naming bug — upstream’s image-template moved to a Justfile shape the tool wasn’t accounting for, which meant new repos were quietly publishing under the placeholder name instead of yours. Fixed, with a regression test.
Chunkah rechunking on by default, comma-separated package entry, a friendlier README, and a handful of smaller robustness fixes (crash guards, a `View Build Status` dead-end, etc).
## Quick start
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Danathar/atomic-image-builder/main/contrib/aib -o ~/.local/bin/aib
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/aib
aib
edit: Fixed weird backslashes…paste artifact for some reason
That’s the whole install. Podman is the only prerequisite. You can also clone the repo and run it that way, or run it out of distrobox, have not tested the distrobox method. Highly recommend you use the container podman method.
I’ve promised an asciinema movie in the past. I’ll get on that
I’m sure somebody will run this outside of me and will break after the first CR..lol. Well, it SHOULDN’T but we’ll see.
Just a note, it’s a very safe utility; it does not change anything on your system, and YOU are the one in charge of switching to the GitHub image once it’s built, so you really can’t break your system by trying it out if you are interested.