ssm

Fast TUI for managing SSH connections, tunnels, and per-host commands.

No more scattered shell aliases, forgotten port numbers, or grepping ps aux for tunnel PIDs. ssm gives you a single place to store hosts, spin up tunnels, and run commands — with aliases that work system-wide.

Install

From source:

cargo install --path crates/ssm

From crates.io:

cargo install ssm

What it does

Manage hosts — Add, edit, delete SSH hosts through a step-by-step wizard. Hosts are stored in ~/.config/ssm/config.toml and automatically synced to ~/.ssh/ssm-hosts.conf, so aliases like ssh prod-api work everywhere — not just inside ssm.

Run tunnels — Start and stop SSH tunnels per host. Tunnels run as background processes and survive app restarts. Status indicators show what's running at a glance.

Scenarios — Group tunnels across multiple hosts into named scenarios. Start your entire dev environment with one keypress instead of running 10 separate ssh -L commands.

Import tunnels — Paste existing ssh -L commands and ssm parses them, groups by host, and creates the tunnel configs automatically. Existing hosts get matched by hostname.

Per-host commands — Save diagnostic commands (logs, status checks, disk usage) scoped to each host. Run them inline or in a new terminal session.

Terminal-aware — Detects tmux, zellij, iTerm2, kitty, WezTerm, and others. SSH sessions open in a split pane or new tab when possible, keeping ssm running alongside.

Filter and tags — Fuzzy search by alias, hostname, or tags. Use tag:prod to filter by tag.

Keybindings

Key	Action
j/k or ↑/↓	Navigate host list
/	Filter hosts
Enter	SSH into selected host
t	Tunnel menu (or add tunnel if none exist)
Shift+T	Toggle all tunnels for a host
s	Scenarios menu
c	Command picker
i	Import tunnels from pasted SSH commands
a	Add new host
e	Edit selected host
d	Delete selected host
?	Help
q	Quit

CLI

Tunnels can also be managed without the TUI:

ssm tunnel start prod-api postgres   # start a specific tunnel
ssm tunnel stop prod-api             # stop all tunnels for a host
ssm tunnel status                    # list all running tunnels

Config

Everything lives in ~/.config/ssm/config.toml:

[[hosts]]
alias = "prod-api"
hostname = "10.0.1.50"
user = "deploy"
port = 22
identity_file = "~/.ssh/id_ed25519"
tags = ["prod", "api"]

[[hosts.tunnels]]
name = "postgres"
local_port = 5432
remote_host = "localhost"
remote_port = 5432

[[hosts.commands]]
name = "logs"
command = "tail -f /var/log/app/api.log"

[[scenarios]]
name = "dev-env"

[[scenarios.tunnels]]
host = "prod-api"
tunnel = "postgres"

On first run, ssm imports hosts from your existing ~/.ssh/config.

How it works

• Hosts are stored in TOML, not in ~/.ssh/config directly
• A generated ~/.ssh/ssm-hosts.conf is included via Include in your SSH config
• Tunnels run as detached ssh -N -L processes, tracked by PID in ~/.config/ssm/tunnels.json
• Tunnel processes survive app exit and are reconciled on next launch

License

MIT