SSH & Terminal

SSM Dojo supports direct SSH connections and a built-in terminal that runs an interactive shell over your connection.

Direct SSH connections

A connection can be a direct SSH connection rather than an SSM tunnel. You manage it like any other connection — connect, disconnect, and see live status — and you can create one straight from a discovered instance.

• Connect / Disconnect controls bring the SSH connection up or down.
• The instance's address is resolved for you when creating from Instances.
• Connections stay responsive even while file transfers are running.

Authentication

When SSM Dojo opens an SSH connection it resolves your key in this order:

1. An explicit key path set on the connection.
2. Your SSH agent, if one is running (SSH_AUTH_SOCK).
3. Default keys: ~/.ssh/id_ed25519, then ~/.ssh/id_rsa.

Encrypted keys (passphrases)

If your private key is passphrase-protected, SSM Dojo prompts you for the passphrase and retries the connection (up to a few attempts). Passphrases are kept in memory only — never written to disk — and are cleared when the connection is stopped or the app restarts.

Host-key trust on first use

The first time you connect, the remote host key is recorded and pinned to the connection. On later connects the presented key is compared; if it changed, the connection is rejected as a possible man-in-the-middle. To accept a legitimately changed key, edit the connection to reset the stored key.

Terminal

The Terminal gives you a full shell over an SSH connection.

• Persistent across navigation — switching tabs or screens doesn't kill your shell. Come back and it's still there.
• Resizes with the window.
• Passphrase prompt appears inline if the key is encrypted.
• Stopped state with retry — if the session ends, the terminal shows a clear stopped state you can retry from.

Session lifetime

A terminal session stays alive while you navigate, but stopping the underlying tunnel/connection ends the shell, and closing the app stops all connections and terminals.