ESC (Easy SSH Connection)

ESC is a CLI to manage SSH connections and run interactive sessions or remote commands using a clean, structured configuration.

Features

• Store SSH connections in a single HCL file.
• Aliases for long connection names.
• Execute commands across multiple hosts (optional parallel).
• List and tree view based on name segments.
• Shell completion for bash/zsh.

Installation

From source

go install github.com/sembraniteam/esc/cmd/esc@latest

Local (this repo)

go install ./cmd/esc

Quick start

esc add --name prod --host 10.10.10.1 --user ubuntu
esc connect prod

Configuration

ESC stores its configuration in ~/.esc/config.hcl. The file is created automatically on first use.

Example:

settings {
  timeout_seconds = 30
}

connection "prod" {
  host = "127.0.0.1"
  user = "ubuntu"
  port = 22
  auth {
    type = "agent"
  }
  tags = ["prod", "api"]
}

connection "staging.web.main" {
  host = "127.0.0.1"
  user = "deploy"
  port = 22
  auth {
    type = "key"
    key_path = "/Users/you/.ssh/id_rsa"
    passphrase_env = "ESC_SSH_PASSPHRASE"
  }
}

connection "db" {
  host = "127.0.0.1"
  user = "postgres"
  port = 22
  auth {
    type = "password"
    password_env = "ESC_DB_PASSWORD"
  }
}

alias "p" {
  target = "prod"
}

Auth type

• agent: use SSH agent (SSH_AUTH_SOCK must be set).
• key: use a private key from key_path, optional passphrase from passphrase_env.
• password: use password from the password_env env var.

Main commands

esc add --name prod.api.main --host 10.10.10.1 --user ubuntu
esc rm prod.api.main
esc mv prod.api.main prod.api.primary
esc edit prod.api.primary
esc ls
esc ls prod.*
esc tree
esc show prod.api.primary
esc connect prod.api.primary
esc exec prod.* "uptime" --parallel --limit 5

Alias

esc alias add p prod.api.main
esc alias ls
esc alias rm p

Completion

esc completion bash
esc completion zsh

Connection naming rules

• Max 3 dot-separated segments, for example: prod.api.main.
• Each segment must be lowercase alphanumeric.
• Supported patterns for ls and exec: * or prefix.*.