Remote folders (alpha)

Koloft can open a folder that lives on another computer, one you reach with ssh (a safe way to log in to another computer over the network). The agent (Claude Code, Codex, Muse or Antigravity) runs over there. You watch it and work with it from your Mac. This part is alpha: it is early, it works, and it still has gaps. The ones we know are listed below.

Add one

Click the Add workspace button (the folder with a plus) at the top of the window, then pick Remote directory…. Koloft asks for two things:

Machine: user@host, or a name from your ssh settings
Path on the machine: the full path, starting with /, such as /home/me/project

The Remote directory dialog, marked alpha: Machine is dev@build-box, Path on the machine is /home/dev/projects/tidewatch, with Cancel and Add buttons — the Remote directory dialog: a machine, and a full path on it

Keys set in ~/.ssh/config work everywhere. A password works too: type it once in a tab, and Koloft's own checks use that login after that. A Claude Code, Codex or Muse tab asks you for it there. On a machine ssh has never seen before, it also asks you to say yes to that machine's key. An Antigravity tab cannot ask yet: sign in through one of the other three there first.

These work too:

a company jump host, the computer you must pass through to reach the others
a gateway computer that gives you no real terminal, such as JumpServer
a login shell that is tcsh, csh or fish
a RemoteCommand or RequestTTY line in your ssh settings
keys from an ssh agent that your login shell starts

What happens there

The agent runs on the other machine. The account it uses comes from the pool on your Mac. Its git and gh use a git account kept on that machine, once you pick one. Claude Code's and Antigravity's transcripts (the written record of each session) stay there, and rsync (a tool that copies files) brings copies back; Codex and Muse sessions are listed by asking the tool on the machine. Either way the sessions list reads like a folder on your Mac.

The sessions list: a local folder, harbor-site, and below it a remote folder, tidewatch, tagged dev@build-box with a green dot and two sessions under it, each with a small red dot — a remote folder in the list: the machine's name beside it, a dot lit while connected, and its sessions below. When the dot is dark, hover it: it shows ssh's own reason, and says when signing in from a session tab would fix it.

your Mac                     the other machine
+-----------------+          +------------------+
| Koloft          |          | tmux             |
|                 |   ssh    |  +------------+  |
| the tab         | <------> |  |   claude   |  |
|                 |          |  +------------+  |
| account it      |          |                  |
| picked          | -------> | claude uses it   |
|                 |          |                  |
| copies of       |  rsync   | transcripts      |
| transcripts     | <------- | (the real ones)  |
|   |             |          |                  |
|   v             |          |                  |
| sessions list   |          |                  |
+-----------------+          +------------------+

The picture shows Claude Code; Muse and Antigravity run the same way. They run inside tmux (a program that keeps a terminal going after you leave). If the link drops, the agent keeps working. Koloft keeps trying to reach the machine: soon at first, then less and less often, down to once a minute. Close the session's tab meanwhile and Koloft says so: Could not stop “…” on <machine>: <why>. It is still running there. The row stays lit, and a click joins that session again.
Codex is different: it runs as its own server on the machine, and the Codex screen on your Mac talks to that server over ssh. The server is signed in with the Codex account picked on your Mac: no login is stored on the machine. If ssh drops or the Mac sleeps, the running turn keeps going there, and the tab reconnects by itself. Closing the tab ends the server; a click on the row resumes the same conversation on a new one. With Skip permission prompts on, a new Codex session there runs with no sandbox and never asks, as on your Mac, whatever the account's own Codex settings say. With it off, in a folder the machine trusts, a shell command runs in Codex's sandbox: it may write inside the folder, not outside it, and a sandbox or approval setting in the account's own Codex settings still wins. Some machines block that sandbox with AppArmor (a Linux guard on what programs may do); a plain Ubuntu 24.04 does. There, the tab says so before Codex starts (with the switch on too) and names the fix: load an AppArmor profile on that machine that allows userns (user namespaces) for /usr/bin/bwrap (needs root). The session still starts. With the switch off, each command Codex runs in that sandbox fails until then; with it on, there is no sandbox to block.
The agent gets the koloft command there too, a moment slower, since each answer comes from Koloft on your Mac (see Agents can use Koloft too). It can also start a new session on that machine, in its own git worktree (a second copy of the repo on its own branch).
The first session on a machine takes a few seconds longer: claude fetches its own settings once.
A Claude Code session there runs the machine's own claude, so a remote folder offers Claude Code even when your Mac has none. Codex, Muse and Antigravity still need theirs on your Mac.
For a session there, the sidebar is a few seconds behind the machine: its light, its title, and the line that says what it did last.
Your butler looks after a remote folder's sessions too. It runs on your Mac, not on the machine. From your phone, see A butler on Discord.

What Koloft installs there

bash, tmux, rsync, python3 (for Muse) and curl (when the machine has neither curl nor wget), if the machine is missing them, from its own package manager, which may ask for its sudo password (the admin password)
the agent itself, if the machine has none: claude, muse (about 330 MB, once) and agy from their official installers; codex in the same version as your Mac's, with npm (Node's package tool), Node first
if the claude, muse or agy there is older than this Koloft needs, it gets the tool's own update before the session starts; if that does not bring it up to date, the session does not start and the tab asks you to run the update yourself
gh, GitHub's command-line tool, if the machine has none (about 40 MB, once)
playwright-cli, with npm, the first time a Claude Code session there runs it (about 20 MB, once)
the sign-in tool (Git Credential Manager), if the machine has none, when you add a git account for it by signing in on a site in your browser
a small koloft script, and the guide that tells the agent how to use it
Node, for the status line and for npm (Muse has no status line, so a Muse session skips this); if that fails, the session still runs, just without a status line
on an old Linux, where the usual Node build will not run, one more Node build made for older Linux, from unofficial-builds.nodejs.org

The Workbench there

The Workbench works on a remote folder too. These are all the machine's, not your Mac's:

its files and its changes
the editor and the shell
the Scratchpad
links inside a Markdown file, and path:line links
the card you see with the Workbench folded

An HTML file there opens as a web page, with the styles, scripts and pictures next to it, all read from the machine. Its address starts with koloft-machine://. Such a page cannot keep anything in the browser: it has no localStorage, IndexedDB or cookies (the places a page saves its own data).

When the agent runs a plain open with a file the Workbench can show, or with a web address, the file or page shows in that session's Workbench, as it does on your Mac. A localhost address still means your Mac, not the machine. With "Let agents use Koloft" off, a plain open there never reaches the Workbench: it goes to the machine's own open, if it has one.

The count of changed files there catches up at most every 10 seconds.

A file that changes on the machine shows up by itself: a file you have open reloads, an editor with unsaved edits says Changed on disk, and Browse shows a file added to or removed from an open folder. This catches up every 2 seconds while a session on that machine is working, every 5 seconds while a tab on that machine is open but idle, and every 20 seconds otherwise. Browse's Reload button lists the whole tree again.

If ssh drops for a moment, Files keeps what it showed and Changes offers Retry.

The folder's git panel works there too: the behind number, Fetch now and Pull all run on the machine.

Not there yet

Images and PDFs (document files) from the machine do not show a preview.
Only a Claude Code session there can drive your web tabs; Codex, Muse and Antigravity cannot yet. See Agents can use Koloft too.
A session row's menu offers Copy path (machine:/path) instead of Reveal in Finder.
⌥⏎ search finds a remote Codex session by its title only, not by what was said in it. A remote Muse session is the same while its machine is not connected.

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