Zygos Remote SSH

Connect to any remote machine via SSH. Open folders on remote hosts, run a full IDE-backed server, and chain into devcontainers - all over a stock ssh binary. No bundled SSH library, no native modules, no ControlMaster - just OpenSSH.

Sister project to artizo, our devcontainer extension. Together they give your editor a complete remote development stack: SSH host + devcontainer chaining via resolveExecServer.

Features

• Stock ssh binary - shells out to your system OpenSSH. Uses your existing ~/.ssh/config, keys, agent, ProxyJump, etc.
• resolveExecServer - modern resolver API. Devcontainer extensions (artizo) chain cleanly without sideload hacks.
• Managed SOCKS transport - ssh -D SOCKS5 + ManagedMessagePassing, no port forwarding to manage.
• Auto-detected server download - reads product.json to build the correct server tarball URL for each fork (VSCodium, Trae, Antigravity, Qoder, etc.). Server tarballs are checksum-verified before extraction. A configuration wizard lets you override with a custom template and test it before applying.
• Server bootstrap - vendored busybox provides a known POSIX env on the remote, verified against pinned SHA256 with provenance manifest; server tarball streamed client-side over stdin.
• Server reuse - detects and reuses an existing running server across windows instead of killing and restarting.
• Sleep/wake resilience - timer-skew detection repairs the SSH tunnel after OS sleep/hibernate.
• Askpass with persistent cache - password and passphrase prompts surface as VS Code input boxes. Passphrases are cached in an encrypted store (SecretStorage + AES-256-GCM) with a configurable TTL, shared across windows. Wrong host passwords are detected and evicted.
• Conflict detection - detects when a built-in or installed SSH extension already owns the ssh-remote authority and guides the user to disable it.

Supported editors

• Kiro
• VSCodium (including code-oss, VSCodium-OSS, Trae, Devin, Antigravity, and Qoder)

Why

Microsoft's Remote-SSH extension is closed-source and locked to VS Code. Zygos provides the same functionality for Kiro and VSCodium by shelling out to the system ssh binary and implementing the VS Code resolver API from scratch.

Requirements

End users:

• A supported editor (see above)
• An ssh binary on your PATH (OpenSSH 8+ recommended)

Building from source also requires:

• Node.js 18+
• npm (includes npx)
• GNU Make
• Internet access (to install dev dependencies and download busybox binaries from the Alpine CDN)

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/aergic-labs/zygos.git
cd zygos
npm install
make package

This produces two VSIX files:

• zygos-kiro-0.1.0.vsix
• zygos-vscodium-0.1.0.vsix

Install the one matching your editor.

Busybox binaries

The extension ships a statically-linked busybox binary for the remote bootstrap (x64 and arm64). These are not committed to the repo. make package downloads them automatically from the Alpine Linux CDN, verifies the APK and binary SHA256 against pinned values in tools/busybox/checksums.json, and writes a provenance.json manifest that ships in the VSIX.

To upgrade busybox:

1. Find the new busybox-static package version on the Alpine package index
2. Download the APKs and compute their SHA256
3. Update tools/busybox/checksums.json with the new version and hashes
4. Run make busybox to download and verify

See tools/busybox/PROVENANCE.md for full details.

Getting started

1. Install this extension in your editor.
2. Run Zygos Remote SSH: Connect to SSH Host...
3. Enter user@host (or an ~/.ssh/config alias).
4. A new window opens on the remote. The first connect downloads the server and bootstraps busybox; subsequent connects are fast.

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0). See LICENSE for the full text. Commercial licensing: contact@aergic.com.

© 2026 Aergic Labs, LLC | aergic.com