Remote Machines

Connect to your dev boxes over SSH and run agents on them with full source control, terminals, and worktrees

Overview

Add remote machines over SSH and run agents on your dev boxes — with full source control, terminals, and worktrees, just like a local workspace. Sessions are persistent: you can close your Mac or restart Agentastic and the agents keep running on the remote host in the background.

Adding a Remote

Open the Add Remote Workspace sheet one of two ways:

  • File → Add Remote… (Cmd+Shift+E)
  • The Open Remote button on the Welcome window

Then:

  1. In the SSH Host field, type a host like user@host, or start typing to search your saved hosts
  2. Pick a host from the list (or finish typing a new user@host)
  3. Connect — Agentastic opens a remote workspace and drops you into the host's project

The Host Picker

The picker is populated from your SSH config (~/.ssh/config), so machines you already use from the command line show up automatically. The search box filters by host alias and hostname as you type.

Include directives are expanded

If your ~/.ssh/config pulls in other files with Include directives — a common setup when tools like Cursor, 1Password, or your company's tooling manage hosts in separate files — Agentastic expands those includes (recursively) and lists those hosts too. If a machine was missing from the picker before, this is usually why it now appears.

# ~/.ssh/config
Include ~/.ssh/config.d/*
Include ~/.orbstack/ssh/config

Host dev-box
    HostName 10.0.0.5
    User adel

Working on a Remote

Once connected, a remote workspace behaves like a local one:

  • Terminals run on the remote host and are kept across app restarts
  • Source control (status, diffs, commit, push) operates on the remote checkout
  • Worktrees / agents are created and switched on the remote machine
  • Agent Home launches agents that run on the host, so they keep going after you disconnect

Reconnecting & Offline Mode

  • Remote workspaces restore on launch. If the host is unreachable, the workspace opens in offline mode instead of blocking.
  • Reconnect with a single click when the machine comes back.
  • Because sessions persist on the host, agents that were running are still there when you reconnect.

Tips

  • Set up key-based auth in ~/.ssh/config (an IdentityFile per host) so connecting doesn't prompt for a password.
  • Group machine definitions into Include-d files — Agentastic will pick them up, and so will the ssh CLI.
  • For agents that should outlive your laptop entirely, see also Cloud agents launched from Agent Home.

Related