I guess what I'm asking for is what the point is of a "baked" image for interpreted language ecosystems. Already using multi stage builds.

"Builds" are the same as deploys, so when working with server(s) instead of larger scale deployments, I'm not seeing the benefit of the whole "build image, pull on server" pipeline when I can just ditch the registry and added layers by doing those steps on the server as I would normally in other kinds of scenarios.

But I have seen this in action, which is why I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

The clearer benefit to me seems to be in this scenario to use it as a fast environment provisioning tool.