Separate tracked source from generated artifacts so the repo root stops accumulating helper scripts, manifests, and local runtime outputs.
Move manual shell entrypoints under scripts/, manifests under config/, and the Firecracker API reference under docs/reference/. Make build and runtimebundle now target build/bin, build/runtime, and build/dist as the canonical source-checkout paths.
Update runtime discovery, helper scripts, tests, and docs to follow the new layout while keeping legacy source-checkout runtime fallbacks for existing local bundles during migration.
Validated with bash -n on the moved scripts, make build, and GOCACHE=/tmp/banger-gocache go test ./....
Beat VM create wall time without changing VM semantics.
Generate a work-seed ext4 sidecar during image builds and rootfs rebuilds, then clone and resize that seed for each new VM instead of rebuilding /root from scratch. Plumb the new seed artifact through config, runtime metadata, store state, runtime-bundle defaults, doctor checks, and default-image reconciliation so older images still fall back cleanly.
Add a daemon TAP pool to keep idle bridge-attached devices warm, expose stage timing in lifecycle logs, add a create/SSH benchmark script plus Make target, and teach verify.sh that tap-pool-* devices are reusable capacity rather than cleanup leaks.
Validated with go test ./..., make build, ./verify.sh, and make bench-create ARGS="--runs 2".
