dive

dive is a command-line tool for exploring and analyzing container images, created by Alex Goodman (wagoodman). It provides a detailed, layer-by-layer breakdown of Docker and OCI container images, helping developers understand what is inside their images, identify inefficiencies that bloat image size, and optimize Dockerfile construction. Unlike the standard docker history command, which only shows the commands executed at each layer, dive provides a visual, interactive interface that shows the actual filesystem contents and changes at each layer, including which files were added, modified, or deleted. The tool analyzes each layer for waste: files that are added in one layer and then deleted or overwritten in a subsequent layer still consume space in the final image because of how the container image layering system works. dive identifies these wasted bytes and provides a total efficiency score, helping developers understand how much of their image size is actually necessary versus wasted by poor Dockerfile practices. Key features include: an interactive terminal UI showing layer-by-layer filesystem changes with added, modified, and deleted file indicators, a tree view of the filesystem at any selected layer, a side-by-side comparison showing what changed between the current layer and the previous one, an image efficiency score (percentage of the image that is not wasted), per-layer wasted space breakdown, support for both Docker daemon images and Docker registry images (via dive on image name from a registry), CI/CD integration via the --ci flag (producing machine-readable output and failing builds if efficiency falls below a configurable threshold), and support for analyzing images built with multi-stage Dockerfiles. As of 2026, dive has over 48,000 stars.