An MCP server that gives AI assistants full SSH/SFTP remote operations — session management, command execution, interactive shells, file transfers, port forwarding, and system diagnostics.

Works with Claude Desktop, VS Code + GitHub Copilot, and any MCP-compatible client.

Packages

Features

• Session Management — Connect/disconnect/ping with password or key-based auth

• Command Execution — Run commands with stdout/stderr capture, timeouts, exit codes

• Sudo Execution — Elevated commands with password injected via stdin (never logged)

• Background Jobs — Long-running commands with polling and cancellation

• Interactive Shells — PTY shells with read/write/resize

• SFTP Operations — Upload, download, read, write, delete, list, stat

• Port Forwarding — Local (-L) and remote (-R) SSH tunnels

• System Diagnostics — OS, CPU, memory, disk, network, load, processes

• File Search & Analysis — Find files, grep contents, diff, tail, checksum

• Server Management — Services, processes, cron, network diagnostics, users

• Multi-Host Workflows — Broadcast commands, transfer files between hosts, jump/bastion connections, script execution

• Session Intelligence — System snapshots, snapshot diffs, connection bookmarks

• Container Awareness — List, logs, exec for Docker/Podman containers

• Audit Logging — NDJSON structured logs with filtering

Quick Start

Standalone (npm)

npm install -g simple-ssh-mcp-server

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ssh": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["ssh-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "SSH_MCP_MAX_CONNECTIONS": "10",
        "SSH_MCP_HOST_KEY_MODE": "accept"
      }
    }
  }
}

VS Code + GitHub Copilot

Install the SSH MCP VS Code extension — the server starts automatically when VS Code launches. Requires VS Code 1.99+ and GitHub Copilot.

Tools (49)

Configuration

All settings via environment variables:

See server README for the full configuration reference.

Security

• Sudo passwords injected via stdin, never logged

• ANSI escape sequences stripped from output

• Output truncation prevents unbounded memory

• SSH keepalives detect dead connections

• ESLint security plugin + Gitleaks + CodeQL + Trivy in CI

License

MIT