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".
Reduce the control plane's dependency on helper scripts while keeping the hard Linux integration points in the approved shell-out layer.
Replace the bash-driven image build path with a native Go builder that clones and optionally resizes the rootfs, boots a temporary Firecracker VM, provisions the guest over SSH, installs packages and modules, and preserves the package-manifest sidecar.
Also replace a few small convenience shell-outs with Go helpers: read process stats from /proc, use os.Truncate for ext4 image growth, add file-clone and normalized-line helpers, drop the sh -c work-disk flattening path, and launch Firecracker via a direct sudo command.
Add tests for the new SSH/archive and system helpers, plus a policy test that keeps os/exec imports confined to cli/firecracker/system. Update the docs to describe customize.sh as a manual helper rather than the daemon's image-build backend.
Validated with go mod tidy, go test ./..., and make build.
