builtin.remote-ssh

Remote SSH extension for Lvce Editor.

Authenticated remote web experiment

The remote server can expose an LVCE workspace to the hosted web editor without requiring Electron, a local Node.js bridge, or browser raw-socket access. The workspace backend still runs on the remote machine, while the browser connects to it through an authenticated HTTPS/WebSocket gateway. The browser connector is packaged separately as the web-compatible builtin.remote-server extension; the existing builtin.remote-ssh extension remains Node-hosted so its SSH transport keeps working unchanged in desktop and remote extension hosts.

The gateway deliberately listens only on 127.0.0.1. Put it behind a trusted HTTPS reverse proxy, private-network ingress, or outbound tunnel that provides the public URL. Do not publish the plain local port directly to the internet. For local development only, loopback http:// public URLs are also accepted and produce loopback ws:// connections.

Start the experiment on the remote machine with:

node lvce-remote-ssh-server.mjs serve-web \
  --port=3774 \
  --public-url=https://lvce.example.com \
  --allowed-origin=https://lvce-editor.github.io \
  --workspace=/home/user/project

The command prints a pairing URL. In the hosted editor, run Remote Server: Connect with Pairing URL and paste it. The secret stays in the URL fragment, is exchanged once for an in-memory session, and is never sent to the hosted page server. Each workspace WebSocket then uses a separate, single-use ticket that expires after five minutes. The gateway also validates the browser Origin before proxying an approved workspace process to the loopback-only LVCE backend. Sessions expire after 24 hours or immediately when the gateway restarts.

This is a single-user prototype. Sessions and pairing state are intentionally lost when the gateway restarts; persistent device enrollment, revocation UI, rate limiting, audit logs, and an opinionated tunnel deployment remain future work. A paired session can use terminals and edit files as the remote server user, so it must be treated like shell access.

Run SSH: Connect, enter an SSH destination, and LVCE opens the remote root as remote-ssh://host/. You can also enter host:/absolute/path, an ssh:// URI, or a simple command such as ssh -p 2222 user@host to open a subfolder or use a custom port.

When ~/.ssh/config contains literal Host aliases, the connection prompt offers them as choices while continuing to accept a free-form destination. Wildcard and negated patterns are omitted. Missing, unreadable, empty, or malformed config entries fall back to the free-form prompt.

The extension uses the system ssh executable. Authentication comes from the user's existing OpenSSH config, agent, and keys. Connections are non-interactive, so password prompts are not yet supported. New host keys are accepted by OpenSSH's accept-new policy; changed host keys are rejected.

On first connection, LVCE installs a private Node.js runtime and a versioned filesystem server under ~/.lvce-server. The installer first downloads on the remote and falls back to downloading and transferring from the client. Release hashes are verified before either archive is installed. No system Node.js or Python installation is required.

The filesystem server runs as a user-owned background process on a protected Unix socket. One SSH connector multiplexes filesystem requests for the open remote, and the server remains available for reconnects until it has been idle for three hours. The initial server target is Linux x64; other remote platforms report an explicit unsupported-platform error.

Contributing

git clone git@github.com:lvce-editor/remote-ssh.git
cd remote-ssh
npm ci
npm test