Challenge 3: Pick a Base Image — Possible Solution
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RECOMMENDATION: Slim (e.g. node:18-slim), not Alpine.

WHY NOT ALPINE (the smallest option): Alpine uses musl as its C
library instead of glibc, which this chapter flagged as a genuinely
different library, not a stripped-down version of the same one. Since
the team's app specifically depends on a native addon COMPILED
AGAINST glibc, running it on Alpine risks the addon failing to load
entirely, or — worse — loading but behaving subtly incorrectly in ways
that might not be immediately obvious. Given the team has explicitly
said reliability matters more than size here, choosing the option with
a known, real compatibility risk for their exact use case would be
prioritizing the wrong trade-off.

WHY SLIM FITS: Slim is Debian-based and keeps glibc, meaning the
native addon should behave identically to how it behaves during local
development on a typical glibc-based system — while still meaningfully
reducing image size compared to the full node:18 base by dropping
non-essential packages the team's app doesn't need. This gives most of
the size benefit multi-stage/optimization work is chasing, without
introducing Alpine's specific, known risk for a native-addon-dependent
application.