SSH & Remote Servers

Sandwalk includes built-in SSH management (Dashboard → SSH, New Window (Remote) → Remote-SSH, and sandwalk ssh) so you can connect to remote Linux workstations, cloud VMs, and shared university/HPC servers—even when Sandwalk is not installed on the target machine yet.

1-Click Auto-Install & Persistent Remote Daemon

When you click Connect Window (or run sandwalk ssh connect <user@host>), Sandwalk performs four steps over your existing SSH key/agent credentials:

1. Probe & Password-to-Key Setup: Connects to user@host (or any host from ~/.ssh/config). If the server requires a password on first login, Sandwalk prompts for your password, authenticates via SSH_ASKPASS, and installs your local SSH public key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys so all future connections and automations work passwordlessly.
2. Custom Hostname & ~/.ssh/config Editor: Assign a friendly alias (e.g. ubuntu-server) and edit ~/.ssh/config directly inside the SSH view.
3. User-Space Auto-Install: If sandwalk is not installed on the remote machine, Sandwalk automatically installs the CLI into ~/.local/bin/sandwalk—requiring no sudo or root access.
4. Persistent 24/7 Background Server: Starts sandwalk serve on the remote host using systemd --user (sandwalk.service with Restart=always) or a detached setsid nohup daemon plus a crontab watchdog. When you close your laptop or disconnect SSH, the remote server and all of its Automations keep running.
5. Local SSH Port-Forward Tunnel: Opens a secure local tunnel (127.0.0.1:<port> → remote:8787) so the remote server only needs SSH port 22 open.

Agent & CLI SSH Tools (sandwalk ssh & /ssh)

Both your chat agents and Capy can manage SSH hosts, run remote commands, and sync workspace files using the built-in /ssh and /tao-run-on-slurm skills:

# List saved and ~/.ssh/config discovered hosts
sandwalk ssh list

# Register and probe a remote server
sandwalk ssh add user@remote-server --alias dev-server --workdir ~/workspace
sandwalk ssh probe dev-server

# Auto-install Sandwalk remotely, start the 24/7 daemon, and open an SSH tunnel
sandwalk ssh connect dev-server

# Run a command on the remote server
sandwalk ssh exec dev-server "uptime && df -h ."