ssh-win-gui

ssh-win-gui is a new Windows-native SSH workspace with the compact workflow that makes MobaXterm useful: saved sessions, terminal tabs, a remote browser beside the active shell, and a visible transfer queue. It has its own name, implementation and assets; it does not patch or redistribute MobaXterm.

Saved sessions can be created, edited, grouped, favorited and deleted. Endpoint metadata and an optional private-key path are stored in %APPDATA%\RsyncShell\sessions.json; passwords and key passphrases are never saved. The UI supports only English and Simplified Chinese, selectable from Settings > Language.

Terminal text is copied automatically when a left-button selection completes. When tmux or another application has enabled mouse reporting, hold Shift while dragging to make a local selection. Choose middle-button or right-button paste under Settings > Mouse paste; the choice is saved with the language setting. MobaXterm-style keyword highlighting is enabled by default and can be toggled under Settings. It colors success/true terms green, failure/false terms red and warning terms yellow, while preserving foreground colors already supplied by the remote program. Settings > Keyword highlighting > Customize keywords opens a three-column editor for literal words or phrases; changes are persisted and apply to terminals that are already open.

Settings > Export settings writes ssh-win-gui-settings.json to a folder chosen by the user. The file contains saved session structure and UI preferences, but never passwords, private-key files, key passphrases, or private-key paths. Settings > Import settings reads that file from a selected folder and replaces the saved-session list after confirmation; open terminals stay connected.

Implemented architecture

• .NET 8 WPF owns the window, session tree, tabs, browser and transfer UI.
• The top-level Tunnels command starts and manages local forwarding (-L), remote forwarding (-R), local SOCKS5 (-D) and remote SOCKS5 (-R dynamic) against saved sessions. Tunnels keep running when their manager window closes, have independent stop controls and expose a selectable/copyable log.
• Microsoft's Windows Terminal WPF control renders VT/ANSI output; SSH.NET owns the SSH session, PTY, resize events and 25-second keepalives.
• The file browser opens a separate bounded SSH.NET connection per refresh. A stale browser request can fail or reconnect without closing the terminal tab. Browser path, rows and request lifetime belong to one terminal tab; switching tabs never reuses another tab's rows. If that tab's SSH terminal disconnects, its directory request is cancelled and its rows are cleared immediately. Listings are capped at 5,000 entries and 8 MiB, then replaced in the virtualized file view as one batch so an abnormally large directory cannot exhaust the UI.
• Upload and download use the headless Go rsyncworker.exe. It speaks NDJSON to the desktop app and Go-native rsync protocol 27 over SSH. There is no SCP/SFTP/tar fallback. Transfers are independent jobs: selections and separate tabs can upload/download concurrently, while the transfer log prefixes every event with a task number and session name.
• The compact monitor below the active terminal samples Linux /proc/stat, /proc/meminfo, /sys/class/net, /proc/self/mountinfo and statvfs every two seconds; it never invokes top. The default-route interface and mounted disk can both be changed in the monitor. If nvidia-smi is present, a second compact row shows each GPU's core utilization and used/total VRAM, including eight-GPU hosts.
• File and folder transfers enable rsync zlib compression by default. Folder upload has its own toolbar/menu command. Before a transfer merges an existing folder or replaces a same-name file, the desktop asks the user to continue or cancel. Downloads write a temporary file inside the selected destination directory and atomically replace the final file only after validation.
• Passwords and key passphrases live only in the open tab and worker stdin. They are never written to sessions.json, command-line arguments or transfer logs.
• Opening a session never shows a separate authentication dialog. A configured private key is tried immediately; a missing, unreadable, encrypted, or rejected key falls back to a masked password prompt inside the terminal. Sessions with no key start at that terminal password prompt.
• Terminal and remote-browser host keys are trust-on-first-use with an explicit SHA-256 prompt. Accepted fingerprints are stored in %APPDATA%\RsyncShell\known_hosts.json; changed keys produce a blocking warning. Per user configuration, rsync transfer connections do not verify the host key; their negotiated algorithm and SHA-256 fingerprint are written to the selectable transfer log instead.

Build and run

Requirements are Windows 10 2004 or newer, x64, .NET 8 SDK and Go 1.25 or newer. The remote host needs python3 for directory listing and sh plus a compatible rsync for transfers.

Push-Location .\src\RsyncShell.RsyncWorker
go test ./...
go build -trimpath -o ..\..\tools\rsync\rsyncworker.exe .
Pop-Location

dotnet restore .\RsyncShell.sln
dotnet build .\RsyncShell.sln
dotnet run --project .\src\ssh-win-gui\ssh-win-gui.csproj -- ubuntu@example.com:22

For a clean self-contained x64 package, run the PowerShell 7 publisher:

pwsh -NoProfile -File .\scripts\publish.ps1

The script limits Go to 8 logical workers and MSBuild to 4 nodes, runs Go tests/vet plus the .NET build and tests, then atomically replaces the fixed artifacts\publish\ssh-win-gui-win-x64 directory and matching .zip. It does not create timestamped package directories. The package includes SHA-256 checksums and only English/Simplified-Chinese UI resources. It also publishes the self-contained STDIO MCP server at tools\mcp\ssh-win-gui-mcp.exe.

GitHub Actions runs the same publisher for every push and pull request, and it can also be started manually from the Actions tab. Download the ssh-win-gui-win-x64 workflow artifact when a local .NET/Go toolchain is not available.

To make saved sessions available to Codex globally, register that executable:

codex mcp add ssh_win_gui -- D:\ssh-win-gui-win-x64\tools\mcp\ssh-win-gui-mcp.exe

The MCP server exposes list_sessions, run_script, rsync_upload, and rsync_download. The rsync tools transfer files or recursive directories to exact user-selected destination paths and can rename them during transfer. run_script sends the UTF-8 script directly to remote sh -s over SSH stdin, avoiding a local PowerShell/ssh.exe quoting layer. It reuses saved private-key, SOCKS5 and jump routes and strictly requires a fingerprint already approved by the GUI. It never returns private-key paths and intentionally does not support password or private-key-passphrase prompts. File transfers use the bundled Go rsync worker, with compression enabled and fingerprints logged according to the desktop transfer policy. See Codex SSH MCP integration for the complete tool schema, agent instructions, security boundary, and troubleshooting guide. Codex-compatible agents working in this repository also load the concise rules in AGENTS.md.

The worker binary is deliberately ignored by Git. The app loads it only from its own tools\rsync directory; it does not search environment overrides, PATH, or the current directory because worker stdin contains the active tab's credentials.

If a virtual display driver or GPU composition issue makes the WPF window blank, start with --software-rendering. Unhandled UI/runtime diagnostics are appended under %LOCALAPPDATA%\RsyncShell\logs without suppressing the original crash.

Current boundary

• Password and unencrypted OpenSSH, PEM, and PuTTY PPK v2/v3 private-key authentication are supported by the desktop flow. A key that needs a passphrase falls back to terminal password authentication rather than opening a passphrase dialog. Single-response keyboard-interactive prompts reuse the entered password; multi-factor/OTP prompt flows are not implemented yet. Windows Credential Manager and agent/Pageant are not implemented. Saved sessions support unauthenticated SOCKS5 and another saved private-key session as an SSH jump host; jump routing uses SSH direct-tcpip chaining rather than a local forwarded port.
• Tunnels use the same saved direct, unauthenticated SOCKS5-upstream and SSH jump routes as sessions. Remote dynamic SOCKS5 works for direct and SSH-jump routes; nesting remote dynamic SOCKS5 through an upstream SOCKS5 proxy is rejected with a logged error.
• Go rsync currently exposes recursive copy, zlib compression, times, permissions and links. Partial files, delete, dry-run, ACLs and xattrs are rejected instead of being silently ignored or corrupting the worker protocol stream.
• A directory with more than 5,000 visible entries shows a clear capped-listing warning. Enter a narrower absolute path to reach entries outside that first bounded scan; paged enumeration is not implemented yet.
• CI.Microsoft.Terminal.Wpf is a signed development-time repack of Microsoft's MIT-licensed source. Before a release, pin an official Windows Terminal commit and reproduce the native DLL build; see architecture.