How is the SSH engine different from PuTTY or the OpenSSH client?

It's a Paramiko-based engine wrapped in an IDE. You get jump hosts, session multiplexing, cloud tunneling for NAT-hidden devices, legacy-device fallback (old switches, locked-down routers), and a 10k-line ANSI terminal — all tabbed in one window. PuTTY/OpenSSH still work great for one-off sessions; AidaIDE is for the workflow with 40 of them open at once.

LCOT (Linked Connection and Output Terminal) keeps the file browser and the terminal in sync. cd in the terminal and the file pane follows. Double-click a directory in the file pane and the terminal cd's there. Works across remote SSH sessions.

SSH ENGINE · FILE MANAGER · AI ON SESSION CONTEXT

The SSH workflow you've been duct-taping. In one window.

Tabbed sessions, integrated SFTP, encrypted saved profiles, and a file browser that's literally wired to the terminal — plus optional AI that reads the live session when something breaks.

Free forever · No license key · Pro (AI suite) from $19/mo · Windows / macOS / Linux

pi@edge-01 — /var/log · session 3 Pro AI · live

$ journalctl -u edge-agent -n 20 --no-pager

Jul 23 02:11:04 edge-01 edge-agent[882]: bind: Address already in use

Jul 23 02:11:04 edge-01 edge-agent[882]: FATAL failed to listen on :8080

Jul 23 02:11:04 edge-01 systemd[1]: edge-agent.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'

$ # agent reading this buffer…

$ sudo systemctl restart edge-agent && ss -ltnp | grep 8080

LISTEN 0 128 *:8080 *:* users:(("edge-agent",pid=1204))

Session agent

You Port 8080 is stuck — fix it from this log.

Suggested sudo fuser -k 8080/tcp; sudo systemctl restart edge-agent

Approve & run Edit

Step 1/4 — error in the stream

The aha (loops ~14s): live terminal error → prompt on session context → suggested fix → approve. Pro AI suite; workspace stays free forever. Real UI screenshot · Community blitz kit

Why this matters

Three reasons SSH stops being five tools.

Most engineers run PuTTY + WinSCP + a serial app + an editor + a notebook of host IPs. AidaIDE collapses that into one workspace without dumbing any of it down.

01 / ONE WINDOW

Tabbed everything.

SSH, SFTP, serial, VNC, RDP — every connection is a tab in the same window. No more six-app alt-tab choreography just to deploy one config.

40 sessions, one cmd-tilde

02 / HARDENED ENGINE

Built on Paramiko, not duct tape.

Jump-host chains, session multiplexing, cloud tunneling for NAT-hidden devices, legacy-device fallback (old switches, locked-down routers), 10k-line ANSI scrollback.

Works when OpenSSH gives up

03 / VAULT-BACKED

Saved sessions, AES-256.

Hosts, ports, usernames, key paths, jump chains, per-session terminal settings — all in the encrypted Credential Vault. Nothing in plaintext, and your .ssh/config never has to leave its own file.

One master password unlocks the fleet

The toolkit

Four parts. One muscle memory.

SSH Engine drives the connection. File Manager moves bytes. Saved holds the keys. LCOT wires the two panes together so you stop typing the same cd twice.

SSH ENGINE

Paramiko-based tabbed SSH/SFTP

Jump hosts, session multiplexing, cloud tunneling, ANSI terminal with 10k scrollback, legacy-device fallback, mDNS auto-discovery, serial + VNC + RDP in the same tab bar.

FILE MANAGER

Dual-pane SFTP, edit in place

Local on the left, remote on the right. Drag-drop both ways, multi-select, keyboard-driven, and double-click a file to edit it over the wire with no temp-file shuffle.

SAVED

Encrypted session library

Save host, port, user, key, jump chain, terminal size, color theme, and any session quirks. Stored in the AES-256 Credential Vault. One master password unlocks the whole fleet.

LCOT

Linked Connection and Output Terminal

The file pane and the terminal stay in sync. cd in the terminal and the browser follows. Double-click a directory in the browser and the terminal jumps there. Works across remote SSH sessions.

SSH Engine

The most capable SSH terminal in any IDE.

Where most IDEs bolt on a basic SSH plugin, AidaIDE ships a full engine — the kind of features you'd otherwise hand-roll in a .ssh/config + screen + tmux sandwich.

SSH Engine: connected session with file browser and split editor running over a single SSH connection

Jump-host chains

Configure bastion → relay → target per session. Saved, encrypted, one-click open.

Session multiplexing

One TCP connection, many channels. Open ten tabs on the same host without re-handshaking each time.

Cloud tunneling

Reach NAT-hidden devices through your own relay. No more "give me a port forward."

Legacy-device fallback

Old switches, locked-down routers, hardware that only speaks SSHv1-ish — automatic crypto downgrade with a clear warning, never silent.

10k-line ANSI scrollback

Full ANSI, full colors, full mouse, full Unicode. Copy with the same shortcuts as everywhere else.

Find in output, in every tab

Ctrl+F searches the terminal output in SSH session tabs, not just standalone terminals. If the buffer has already trimmed old lines, the result count tells you — so "not found" never quietly means "not found in what's left."

Read scrollback without losing the tail

Scrolling up pins the view instead of being yanked down by every new line. A chip in the corner counts what arrived while you were reading — 1,240 new — and one click drops you back to the bottom.

File Manager

SFTP, but as a real file manager.

WinSCP-grade transfer, in-line with the terminal it's connected to. No alt-tab, no separate window, no separate auth.

Dual-pane local/remote

Local tree on the left, remote tree on the right. Same shortcuts. Drag-drop both ways. Reads like a desktop file manager.

Edit in place

Double-click a remote file, edit it in the AidaIDE editor, save — the bytes go back over SFTP. No temp file, no manual upload step.

Multi-select + bulk ops

Shift-click, Ctrl-click, select all. Move, copy, chmod, chown across dozens of files in one go. Background queue with retry.

Search across the remote tree

Find files by name or content over SFTP without dropping to the shell. Open the match, no extra cd / ls dance.

Transfer history + resume

Every upload/download logged. Interrupted transfers resume on reconnect. No "starting from byte 0 again."

Saves to Windows hosts, verified

Editing a file on a Windows box goes over SFTP whenever the channel is alive, and every write is read back and checked before it reports success. A save that says it worked, worked.

Saved Sessions

Your fleet, in an encrypted vault.

PuTTY-style saved sessions, except the entire library lives in a real AES-256 vault behind one master password — and saves a lot more than PuTTY does.

AES-256 Credential Vault

Hosts, ports, usernames, key file paths, jump-host chains, and per-session terminal preferences. All ciphertext on disk.

SSH-key aware

Link a saved session to a specific key. Optional passphrase prompt. Or unlock everything via the vault master password.

Folder + tag organization

Group by environment, project, customer. Tag for fast filter. Search by hostname, IP, or tag.

One-click open

Double-click anywhere in the saved list and a new tab opens with the connection already negotiated.

Import from PuTTY / OpenSSH

Pull in your existing .ssh/config and PuTTY registry entries. Re-encrypt them into the vault on first run.

Sync across devices (Teams)

Teams plan: shared encrypted session library across all 5 seats. Add a new host once, everyone has it.

Quick Scan finds what's out there

Sweep a subnet and get every reachable device, not just the ones answering on 22. Runs on an isolated network with no internet, binds to the interface you pick, and takes seconds.

Devices that move, stay found

A board that picks up a new DHCP lease heals itself in the fleet list instead of going dark. Device edits stick, and Manage Device shows the SSH port it's actually using.

LCOT

The file pane and the terminal are wired together.

Linked Connection and Output Terminal. Two panes, one cursor. The thing you didn't know you wanted until you used it for ten minutes.

LCOT Command Assistant: terminal output on the left, command palette of WiFi, packet capture, memory, network and IoT tools on the right

cd anywhere, both panes follow

Type cd /var/log in the terminal — the file browser jumps to /var/log. Double-click a folder in the browser — the terminal cd's there.

Per-tab linkage

Each SSH tab has its own linked browser. Switch tab, the file pane retargets. No cross-talk between hosts.

Drag-out from terminal output

See a file path in the terminal output? Drag it to the local pane to pull it down. Or right-click for "open / edit / download."

Command packs for the gear you actually touch

The Command Assistant ships vendor packs — Cisco IOS, Juniper, MikroTik, Aruba in both the ArubaOS-CX and ProCurve dialects, OpenWrt, and BIRD — covering config backups, ARP tables, routing tables, and MAC address tables. Stop keeping a text file of per-vendor syntax.

Nothing is hidden silently

Packs you haven't enabled are counted, never concealed. Search for a vendor and the panel tells you how many matching groups are sitting in packs that are switched off, with a button that turns them on — so a missing command is never mistaken for an unsupported one.

Toggleable

Don't want the linkage on a particular tab? One click un-links. The two panes stay independent until you turn it back on.

Live agents

Agents that attach to the session you're already in.

An AI assistant that can't see the device is just autocomplete. AidaIDE's agents ride the same SSH channel as your terminal, so they read the real filesystem on the real machine.

Attached to the live session

The agent reaches the device filesystem through your open SSH connection — no second login, no copy of the repo, no guessing at paths that only exist on the target.

Pick the device, not the directory

The device picker attaches an agent to any saved device or fleet entry. Point it at the Pi that's actually failing instead of describing the Pi in a prompt.

Context indexed from the remote box

In an SSH session the assistant indexes the remote device over SFTP. It answers from the code and configs on that machine, not from whatever happens to be open locally.

Runs on your own models

Point agents at cloud providers or at Ollama running on the device itself. Local & remote models →

Who reaches for this

Three real workflows.

Not contrived demos — the kind of work the SSH toolkit actually shortens.

Pi & ESP32 swarm

"40 Pis behind a NAT, need to push a config."

Cloud tunneling reaches every device
Saved jump-host chain per environment
Multi-select in the file manager + bulk SCP
LCOT keeps each tab's pwd in sync

Industrial OT triage

"Locked-down legacy switch is throwing errors."

Legacy fallback gets you in without a downgrade fight
Serial console + plotter for the RS-232 path
Saved session preserves the obscure cipher settings
Vault keeps the on-call shared password out of Slack

Remote dev across regions

"Five build boxes, three customers, one editor."

One window, five SSH tabs, five linked file panes
Edit remote files in place, save = upload
Per-tab terminal history, no cross-contamination
Team-shared saved sessions on the Teams plan

Pricing — included free

SSH Engine, File Manager, Saved, LCOT — all free.

Not an add-on, not a trial. The full SSH toolkit ships in AidaIDE's free tier — no license key required.

Free

AidaIDE base software

$0 forever

no license key, no trial clock

free forever — really

Full SSH Engine + jump hosts + tunneling
Dual-pane File Manager (SFTP)
Saved Sessions in AES-256 vault
LCOT linked browser/terminal
Serial console + VNC + RDP
19+ languages in the editor

Pro

The AI suite, advanced scans, cameras

$19/mo

or $190/year

save 17% on annual · 5-year price lock

AI Hierarchy Builder & Composer
AI Copilot + multi-agent workflows
Advanced network scans
Camera Manager (ONVIF / NVR)
Teams Pro: 5 seats — $70/mo or $700/yr

Buy Pro

Common questions

Quick answers.

How is the SSH engine different from PuTTY or OpenSSH?

It's a Paramiko-based engine wrapped in an IDE. You get jump hosts, session multiplexing, cloud tunneling for NAT-hidden devices, legacy-device fallback, and a 10k-line ANSI terminal — all tabbed in one window. PuTTY and OpenSSH still work great for one-off sessions; AidaIDE is for the workflow with 40 of them open at once. Compare: PuTTY · WinSCP · Termius · MobaXterm.

What's the difference between the File Manager and SFTP?

It IS SFTP — just presented as a dual-pane local/remote file browser instead of a command-line tool. Drag-drop both ways, in-place editing that writes back over the wire, multi-select, and full keyboard navigation. You don't need WinSCP or FileZilla in a separate window.

How are saved sessions stored — is it secure?

Saved sessions live in the encrypted Credential Vault (AES-256, master-password protected). Hosts, ports, usernames, key paths, jump-host chains, and per-session terminal settings — all ciphertext on disk. The vault unlocks once at startup; everything else flows from there.

What is LCOT, exactly?

LCOT = Linked Connection and Output Terminal. The file browser pane and the terminal pane stay in sync. cd in the terminal and the browser follows. Double-click a directory in the browser and the terminal cd's there. Each SSH tab has its own linked browser, so there's no cross-talk between hosts. It's toggleable — un-link any tab in one click.

Does it support serial, VNC, RDP — or only SSH?

All of the above. Serial console with a live plotter for embedded targets, VNC/RDP for remote desktops, and SSH/SFTP for everything else. All in tabs in the same window.

Can I import my existing PuTTY / OpenSSH sessions?

Yes — AidaIDE reads your .ssh/config and PuTTY registry entries on first run and offers to import them into the encrypted vault. After that they're re-encrypted at rest; the originals stay where they were.

Is the SSH toolkit a separate purchase?

No — it's the core of AidaIDE and it's completely free. SSH Engine, File Manager, Saved Sessions, and LCOT are all in the free tier, no license key required. AidaIDE Pro adds the AI suite, advanced network scans, and cameras for $19/mo or $190/yr.