The qcow2 is written with zstd and 2M clusters after trimming freed blocks, and the appliance leaves out clang, llvm, the Docker plugins, lazydocker, base-devel, aether, and yay, plus usr/share/doc through NoExtract: 2.78 GB became 2.10 GB. sudo is installed explicitly now that base-devel no longer pulls it in. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019krxFwnSbEM2n2QNQ1rG1K