Fix the misleading make install path where banger and bangerd still depended on a repo checkout for Firecracker, guest artifacts, image builds, and the SSH key.
Replace repo-root inference with an explicit runtime bundle model: resolve a runtime_dir from env/config/install layout, derive concrete artifact paths from it, and update the daemon, CLI, and image-build flow to use those paths. Keep repo_root only as an explicit compatibility alias instead of auto-detecting it.
Teach customize.sh to run from a read-only bundled runtime tree while writing transient state under XDG/BANGER_STATE_DIR, and make make install copy the runtime assets into PREFIX/lib/banger so installed binaries stay usable outside the repo.
Validate with go test ./..., make build, bash -n customize.sh, and make install DESTDIR=/tmp/banger-install PREFIX=/usr. An out-of-repo installed-binary smoke test was attempted, but this sandbox blocked bangerd from binding its Unix socket (setsockopt: operation not permitted).
Replace the shell-only user workflow with `banger` and `bangerd`: Cobra commands, XDG/SQLite-backed state, managed VM and image lifecycle, and a Bubble Tea TUI for browsing and operating VMs.\n\nKeep Firecracker orchestration behind the daemon so VM specs become persistent objects, and add repo entrypoints for building, installing, and documenting the new flow while still delegating rootfs customization to the existing shell tooling.\n\nHarden the control plane around real usage by reclaiming Firecracker API sockets for the user, restarting stale daemons after rebuilds, and returning the correct `vm.create` payload so the CLI and TUI creation flow work reliably.\n\nValidation: `go test ./...`, `make build`, and a host-side smoke test with `./banger vm create --name codex-smoke`.