The --platform and --push flags are important enablers for pre-building images - particularly those that take advantage of Dev Container Features (devcontainers/spec#61).
Unfortunately, right now there's an error if only an image is referenced along with a set of features in devcontainer.json. Given just being able to just start from an image is one of the primary goals of Dev Container Features, this seems to be pretty clearly a bug.
This occurred in version 0.9.1 of the CLI.
Error: --platform or --push require dockerfilePath.
at doBuild (/usr/local/share/npm-global/lib/node_modules/@devcontainers/cli/dist/spec-node/devContainersSpecCLI.js:342:23)
at async build (/usr/local/share/npm-global/lib/node_modules/@devcontainers/cli/dist/spec-node/devContainersSpecCLI.js:233:20)
{"outcome":"error","message":"--platform or --push require dockerfilePath.","description":"--platform or --push require dockerfilePath."}
//cc @chrmarti @joshspicer @alexdima @bamurtaugh