is there a reason why pulumi/pulumi docker doesn't come with all plugins installed? Or maybe having pulumi-full image is something you might be open to?

The plugins are all versioned, and depend on what versions of each package you are using in your program. It would inflate the size of this image significantly to include them all by default. That said, you can definitely derive your own docker image from the base

pulumi/pulumi

image and bake in any

node_modules

and plugins that you need for your specific application (updating that only when you update your dependencies).