Describe essential CI/CD stages for a containerized app and critical quality gates

This evaluates whether you can architect an automated commit-to-prod workflow, not merely list tools. A strong answer sequences stages clearly: commit triggers a container image build and unit tests; the image is scanned for vulnerabilities and pushed to a registry; staging deployment runs integration and smoke tests; production rollout uses canary or blue-green deploys with automated rollback on failure. Critical gates include build success, test coverage thresholds, zero critical CVEs, and staging smoke-test passage before traffic shifts.