agentic_ssh#

agentic_ssh is a high-performance Model Context Protocol (MCP) server written in Rust specifically engineered to provide agent-hardened, token-efficient, and asynchronous SSH orchestrations for AI agents.

Unlike generic terminal tools that block agent execution or flood context windows with verbose compiler output, agentic_ssh acts as a smart runtime layer. It automatically discovers hosts from your local SSH configurations, manages connection heartbeats, handles silent network dropouts, and supports detached background job scheduling with isolated session logging.

Quick Start#

# Install Homebrew (MacOS or linux)
brew tap sandbanks/tap
brew trust sandbanks/tap
brew install agentic_ssh

# Install Homebrew (one step)
brew install sandbanks/tap/agentic_ssh

# Install (recommended: pre-compiled binary via cargo-binstall)
cargo binstall agentic_ssh

# Or compile from source via cargo
cargo install agentic_ssh

# Auto-configure and register with your active agent environments
agentic_ssh install

High-Leverage Features#

• Asynchronous Background Orchestration (background: true): Instantly hands control back to the agent runner when long-running scripts (such as massive Nix setups, system updates, or heavy compilation tasks) are fired. The agent is immediately freed to process other workflows concurrently while the remote task crunches in the background.
• Token-Efficient Session Telemetry: Completely routes around agent frameworks that swallow local stderr. Long jobs stream progress to unique, self-cleaning session log files (~/.agentic_ssh/sessions/*.log), preventing concurrent agent instances from clobbering each other's outputs.
• Smart Progress Tickers (quiet: true): Keeps human terminal dashboards updated via a configurable time-interval progress loop without transferring a single line of raw compilation text over the internet, saving massive amounts of LLM context tokens.
• Hardened Connection Heartbeats: Automatically configures russh keepalives to ping remote environments every 30 seconds, preventing intermediate overlays (like Tailscale, cloud virtual routers, or firewalls) from silently dropping connections during long, quiet CPU-heavy builds.
• Automatic Host Discovery: Recursively parses ~/.ssh/config (including Include directives, wildcards, and path expansion) to securely extract explicit host aliases.
• Zero-Quoting Headaches: Structured argument templates are automatically escaped and joined natively behind the scenes, completely eliminating the painful double/triple shell escaping errors normally generated when agents try to quote remote utilities over standard SSH shells.

MCP Configuration#

Automated Installation (Recommended)#

agentic_ssh can automatically detect, register, and patch configuration schemas for a wide ecosystem of agent tools:

# Auto-detect all supported agents on your system and register agentic_ssh
agentic_ssh install

# Register specifically for a particular agent framework:
agentic_ssh install --agent claude
agentic_ssh install --agent cursor
agentic_ssh install --agent antigravity

Supported agents for the --agent flag include: claude (Claude Code / Desktop), cursor, zed, cline, roo-code, gemini, copilot, grok, and antigravity.

Manual Configuration#

To manually register agentic_ssh with an MCP client (such as Claude Desktop), append it to your local configuration routing block:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "agentic_ssh": {
      "command": "/Users/YOUR_USER_NAME/.cargo/bin/agentic_ssh",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}

Built-in MCP Tools#

agentic_ssh registers a rich set of built-in tooling commands to let the AI agent inspect, monitor, and query host configurations:

• list_hosts: Returns the list of discovered and allowed remote SSH hosts.
• list_groups: Returns a map of configured host groups and their member hosts.
• run_command: Runs a shell command concurrently (supports synchronous inline collection or asynchronous background detaching).
• get_system_stats: Retrieves core system stats (CPU, RAM, and disk utilization).
• list_ports: Discovers active listening TCP/UDP ports, matching processes, and PIDs.
• search_processes: Filters and evaluates active processes on the host.
• tail_log: Fetches tail frames from target file paths.
• tail_container_logs: Fetches tail frames from target Docker container logs.
• wait_for_log_pattern: Blocks and streams logs until a matching regex pattern is detected.
• check_service_status: Queries the status of systemd/systemctl service daemons.
• check_docker_status: Inspects status of the Docker engine and active container metrics.
• list_upgradable: Identifies remote packages that have newer versions available.
• git_pull: Fetches and merges updates from a target Git repository configuration.
• find_large_files: Finds files exceeding specified size limits on target volumes.
• grep_syslog: Queries remote system log streams for custom search patterns.
• list_cron_jobs: Displays configured cron schedule tables for users and systems.
• list_network_connections: Lists active TCP/UDP socket network connections.

Direct CLI Tool Execution (JSON Output)#

For debugging, custom scripting, or simple multi-host queries, developers can run the MCP tools directly from their terminal using the json subcommand. The output is returned as standard, clean JSON:

# General Syntax
agentic_ssh json <tool_name> [arguments]

# Examples:
# 1. Discover host groups configuration
agentic_ssh json list_groups

# 2. Get system stats for specific hosts (comma-separated positional shortcut)
agentic_ssh json get_system_stats aruba,stan,delight

# 3. Query listening ports with full JSON arguments payload
agentic_ssh json list_ports '{"hosts": ["aruba", "stan"]}'

# 4. Run an arbitrary remote command concurrently
agentic_ssh json run_command '{"hosts": ["aruba", "stan"], "command": "free -h"}'

Master Domain Tooling Schema#

1. run_command#

Executes a shell command on one or multiple configured hosts. Supports both synchronous inline collection and asynchronous background detached tracking.

• Arguments:

• host (string, optional): The SSH host alias to target.

• hosts (array of strings, optional): Optional list of multiple host targets to query concurrently.

• command (string, required): The command payload to execute.

• background (boolean, optional, Defaults to false): When set to true, the command instantly detaches into a background Tokio thread and returns an isolated session log path immediately, freeing the agent for parallel tasks.

• quiet (boolean, optional, Defaults to true): When true, avoids heavy terminal output by outputting a lean progress metrics heartbeat. When false, real-time verbose raw standard output stream blocks are preserved in telemetry files.

• progress_interval_secs (integer, optional, Defaults to 5): Defines the polling interval sequence for the progress ticker if quiet = true.

• abbreviate (boolean, optional): Truncates massive output strings for synchronous paths to optimize token consumption.

• Returns:

• Detached Background Mode (background: true):

{
  "status": "started",
  "log_path": "/Users/richard/.agentic_ssh/sessions/job_20260627_1649_cartman_5f58.log",
  "message": "🚀 Command started in background. To watch live progress, run:\n  tail -f /Users/richard/.agentic_ssh/sessions/job_20260627_1649_cartman_5f58.log"
}

• Synchronous Mode: A JSON payload detailing structured stdout, stderr, and remote numeric exit_code.

2. list_hosts#

Lists all explicit SSH host aliases configured in your ~/.ssh/config file matching security criteria.

• Arguments: None
• Returns: A JSON array of secure string aliases (e.g., ["stan", "kyle", "cartman", "edge-router"]).

3. Diagnostic & Inspection Tools#

All built-in diagnostic primitives are pre-configured to handle background tracking implicitly (quiet = true), keeping operational latency low and protecting system context windows:

• get_system_stats: Retrieves core system stats (CPU load averages, active memory constraints, disk partitions) formatted as high-integrity JSON.
• list_ports: Discovers active listening TCP and UDP sockets with explicit structural filter criteria.
• search_processes: Evaluates active remote process layers using high-performance regex or matching string criteria.
• **tail_log / tail_container_logs**: Fetches explicit tail frames from standard system paths or target Docker engine containers.

Writing Agent-Friendly Tool Descriptions#

When declaring custom tools inside your configurations, writing high-quality description strings is critical. While humans rely on context and intuition, AI agents interpret these descriptions literally to decide when, why, and how to invoke a tool.

To write effective tool descriptions, follow these five core design pillars:

• Action Verbs First: Always lead with explicit actions (e.g., "Fetches", "Runs", "Deploys").
• Describe Mechanics, Not Just Intent: Focus on the concrete command execution details (e.g., "Runs cargo test" vs. "Checks code").
• State Explicit Constraints: Clearly document prerequisites and failure conditions (e.g., "Requires sudo", "Fails if git status is dirty").
• Loud Warnings for High-Blast-Radius Actions: Use uppercase words to signal critical risk parameters (e.g., "DANGEROUS: Forcefully terminates process", "CRITICAL: Modifies remote state").
• Define Return Format Expectations: Detail exactly what output telemetry data the agent should expect (e.g., "Returns plain text", "Returns systemd status summary").

Advanced Configuration Overrides#

Customize matching rule engines or specify layout configurations globally using an optional TOML asset located at ~/.config/agentic_ssh/config.toml:

# Custom path to look for pooling state tables
pool_status_path = "~/.agentic_ssh_pool_status.json"

# Disable automatic background update checks (for offline or quiet environments)
disable_update_check = true # or: no_update_check = true

# Strict isolation security boundaries
ignore_hosts = ["*.prod.company.com", "secure-gateway"]
allow_hosts = ["stan", "kyle", "*.local"]

# Inject custom parameterized statements directly into the agent toolkit
[tools.git_pull]
description = "Fetches and merges latest changes from an explicit branch configuration."
command = ["git", "-C", "/home/richard/Projects/ldk", "pull", "origin", "{{branch}}"]
allow_hosts = ["stan"]
[tools.git_pull.params.branch]
validation = "strict"

Disabling Automatic Update Checks#

By default, agentic_ssh checks GitHub Releases in the background for newer versions (cached every 24 hours) and prints a notice on stderr if an upgrade is available.

You can disable version checking entirely via CLI flag or configuration setting:

• Via CLI Flag:

  agentic_ssh --no-update-check <subcommand>
  

• Via Configuration File (~/.config/agentic_ssh/config.toml or .agentic_ssh.toml):

  disable_update_check = true
  # or alias:
  no_update_check = true
  

Declaring Hosts and Groups#

• Hosts: agentic_ssh automatically discovers individual host aliases configured in your standard ~/.ssh/config file (respecting any allow_hosts/ignore_hosts filters).
• Groups: You can define custom multi-host groups to run tasks or watch commands on multiple targets simultaneously. Groups are configured under the [groups] table in either your global configuration file (~/.config/agentic_ssh/config.toml) or a local project configuration (.agentic_ssh.toml):

[groups]
nix = ["stan", "cartman", "kyle"]
nixos = ["kenny"]
ubuntu = ["stan", "cartman", "kyle"]
oracle = ["kyle", "kenny"]
pi5 = ["stan", "cartman"]
compose = ["stan", "kyle", "kenny"]
uncloud = ["cartman"]
web-fleet = ["web-server-1", "web-server-2", "web-server-3"]
database-fleet = ["db-master", "db-replica-1"]

Real-Time Command Watcher (TUI)#

You can watch commands executing concurrently across one or multiple hosts in real-time. This is perfect for monitoring multi-node deployments, streaming server logs, or watching build compilation:

# Watch a command on a single host
agentic_ssh watch web-server-1 "tail -f /var/log/nginx/access.log"

# Watch concurrently on multiple hosts (comma-separated list)
agentic_ssh watch "web-server-1,web-server-2" "free -h"

# Watch a command on an entire group defined in your config.toml
agentic_ssh watch web-fleet "docker logs -f my-app"

Dynamic Post-Execution Inspection Mode#

When all node executions conclude (either by completing, failing, or canceling), the TUI layout smoothly pivots from the Multi-Tail grid view into an interactive Split-Pane Inspection Mode:

• Host Sidebar (Left Pane): A navigable menu showing the final status (✅ success, 🔴 failure) of all target hosts. Use Up/Down or J/K to switch between hosts.
• Log Viewport (Right Pane): Shows the complete log buffer for the selected host read from local telemetry logs. Scroll through the log buffer using PageUp/PageDown or the mouse scroll wheel.
• Exit: Press Esc, Q, or Ctrl+C to immediately clean up and exit back to your shell.

TUI Monitoring Dashboard#

Inspect connection pool tracking states, idle intervals, and active time-to-live metrics directly using the built-in terminal monitoring component:

agentic_ssh tui

Acknowledgments#

Standing on the shoulders of giants...

• Enzo - MCP server installation code from tokensave

License#

MIT / Apache 2.0