I just edited my post above to include the fact that if you want to build a container of a custom app you'll need to use buildtasks to build to ISO first (./bt-iso app-name). Also if your custom appliance isn't a git repo with a remote configured it will error. Tweaking the code to work around that is probably the easiest way to go (unless you plan on making your custom app public)...
Just realised that I had missed an important point.