The deployment tool works by bootstrapping a fresh image, loading the vocabulary into this image, then applying various heuristics to strip the image down to minimal size.

The deploy tool generates staging images containing major subsystems, and uses the staging images to derive the final application image. The first time an application is deployed using a major subsystem, such as the UI, a new staging image is made, which can take a few minutes. Subsequent deployments of applications using this subsystem will be much faster.