How can one use an existing instance to select a type to create in an IoC container?

I think what you are looking for is the ForObject() method in StructureMap. It can close an open generic type based on a given object instance. The key change you need to make to your design is to introduce the generic type.

You don't want dependency injection for this. You want a factory (which, of course, you can build using your container). The factory would know how to take, say, an IProcessorSettings and return the appropriate IProcessor.

In short, you can build a factory that uses the concrete type of an object that implements IProcessorSettings and the container to resolve an instance of the appropriate type.

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