Feature Request rtk ssh subcommand — remote command output filtering

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#333 3 comments 5 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
38/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli, devtools

Research direction

The requested entry point is a new rtk ssh subcommand; begin by reading the existing rtk filters and the PreToolUse hook behavior described in the issue. Verify how remote stdout, exit codes, and interactive sessions are handled. Done means recognized remote commands use the appropriate filter, unrecognized commands use the generic rtk log fallback, and normal SSH behavior remains safe.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

area:cli effort-large enhancement help wanted platform:macos priority:medium

rtk ssh subcommand — remote command output filtering

Running rtk discover on a codebase with multiple remote dev servers shows SSH as by far the largest unhandled savings opportunity:

TOP UNHANDLED COMMANDS

Command Count Example
ssh [host] 787 ssh host "cd /project && git log --oneline -20"
ssh [host2] 200 ssh host2 "cat /etc/some-config"
ssh [host3] 30 ssh host3 "diff /path/file1 /path/file2"

~1,000 SSH invocations in 30 days, all piping back verbose output that rtk could filter if it had a way to intercept.

Proposed: rtk ssh

rtk ssh user@host "pytest tests/"        # pipe remote stdout through rtk pytest
rtk ssh user@host "git log -n 20"        # pipe through rtk git log
rtk ssh user@host "cat big-file.log"     # pipe through rtk log

The subcommand would:

  1. Execute the remote command via SSH normally
  2. Detect the remote command type (first token after the quoted string)
  3. Pipe stdout through the appropriate existing rtk filter

Why the hook can't handle this today

The PreToolUse hook could rewrite ssh host "cmd" → ssh host "cmd" 2>&1 | rtk log, but this breaks exit codes and interactive sessions, so a dedicated subcommand is safer.

Fallback behaviour

If the remote command type isn't recognised, pipe through rtk log (dedup + truncate) as a generic fallback — still better than raw output.

Environment: macOS, Claude Code PreToolUse hook, rtk 0.24.0

Dominant language
Rust
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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