SSH MCP Tool — Production-Grade SSH Automation for AI Agents

@oaslananka

Visit Server

2 months ago

Production-grade MCP server that opens persistent SSH sessions and exposes safe, structured tools for command execution, file operations, transfers, tunnels, package and service management, metrics, resources, and guided prompts. Secure by default: strict host-key verification, root login disabled, raw sudo policy-gated, destructive commands denied unless explicitly allowed.

Overview Tools Comments

Overview

SSH MCP Tool

Production-grade MCP server for SSH automation. Opens persistent SSH sessions and exposes safe, structured tools to MCP clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT, custom agents).

Why this server

Trust: central policy engine, structured audit events, redacted logs, strict host keys, machine-readable errors.
MCP quality: stdio for local clients, Streamable HTTP for remote clients, legacy SSE only behind an explicit compatibility flag.
AI-friendly tools: stable output schemas, structuredContent, annotations for read-only / destructive / idempotent behavior, resources, and curated prompts.
Operations: session TTL/eviction, command timeouts, transfer checksum verification, real SSH forwarding, Prometheus metrics, OpenTelemetry hooks.
Portability: SFTP first, POSIX/BusyBox-aware shell fallbacks, explicit support boundaries.

Quick Start

npm install -g mcp-ssh-tool

Add to your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ssh-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-ssh-tool"]
    }
  }
}

Use it from your AI client:

Open a safe SSH session to prod-1 as deploy, inspect host capabilities, then show disk usage.

Security defaults

Strict host-key verification is on
Root login is off
Raw sudo is policy-gated
Destructive commands and filesystem mutations are denied unless policy allows them
Remote HTTP starts on loopback only unless bearer auth and allowed origins are configured

Available tools

ssh.session.open / ssh.session.close — persistent session lifecycle
ssh.exec — run commands with timeout, structured output, audit log
ssh.file.read / ssh.file.write / ssh.file.list — safe file operations
ssh.transfer.upload / ssh.transfer.download — SFTP with checksum verification
ssh.tunnel.open — local/remote port forwarding
ssh.package.install / ssh.service.restart — package and systemd management
ssh.metrics — host metrics (CPU, RAM, disk, network)
Plus resources and guided prompts

Requirements

Node.js 22.22.2+ or 24.14.1+ (LTS only)
SSH access to target hosts
Populated known_hosts file or explicit per-session host-key policy

License

MIT

Try in Playground

Server Config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ssh-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-ssh-tool"
      ],
      "env": {
        "MCP_SSH_KNOWN_HOSTS": "~/.ssh/known_hosts",
        "MCP_SSH_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Build with ShipAny.