zc

I run Claude Code on a remote desktop over ssh, inside a zellij session so it keeps working if my connection drops. Two things annoyed me about that:

• Every dropped connection meant ssh ... again, then zellij attach -c ... again.
• When the link died mid-session, my local terminal was often left in a mess — stray escape codes, mouse reporting stuck on — because the remote never got to clean up after itself.

zc is a small wrapper that fixes both. It's ssh + zellij attach with a reconnect loop and proper terminal cleanup around it.

How it works

zc shells out to your system ssh, so keyboard, mouse, resize, and paste all pass through exactly as they would over a normal ssh session. It just owns the loop around that:

• On a dropped connection it restores your terminal, clears the screen, and reconnects with backoff. Your zellij session is still running on the remote, so you pick up where you left off.
• When you detach (Ctrl+o d by default) or the session ends, zc exits cleanly instead of reconnecting.
• If it can't connect in the first place — expired credentials, wrong host — it shows you ssh's actual error and gives up after a few tries, rather than looping forever.

Usage

zc setup            # configure hosts (name, hostname, user, default session)
zc session work     # ssh to your host and attach the "work" session
zc session          # uses the host's default session
zc session --host desktop work

zc setup writes ~/.config/zc/config.toml. You can edit it by hand too:

default_host = "desktop"

[[host]]
name = "desktop"
hostname = "desktop.example.com"
user = "me"
default_session = "work"

Install

cargo install --git https://github.com/marcbowes/zc

The remote needs zellij on its PATH (or set zellij_path for that host in the config). Set up your ssh keys / config so plain ssh yourhost works before pointing zc at it.

Status

Works for what I use it for. It wraps the ssh binary today; the connection logic sits behind a small trait so other transports can slot in later.