Skip to content

skill: note global naming and non-interactive shell gotchas #193

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
daveonkels wants to merge 1 commit into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from
Open

skill: note global naming and non-interactive shell gotchas #193

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
1 commit
Select commit
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
18 changes: 18 additions & 0 deletions skill/SKILL.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -28,6 +28,10 @@ scp file.txt <vm>.exe.xyz:~/ # transfer file

Every VM gets `https://<vm>.exe.xyz/` with automatic TLS.

## Naming

VM names are globally unique across all exe.dev customers. If `new --name=<n>` errors with `"this VM name is not available"`, the slug is taken (by you or someone else) — pick another. Generic names like `app`, `staging`, `demo` are mostly gone; add a suffix (`<purpose>-<yyyymmdd>` or a short random) for any new VM you intend to keep.

## A tale of two SSH destinations

- **`ssh exe.dev <command>`** — the exe.dev lobby. A REPL for VM lifecycle, sharing, and configuration. Does not support scp, sftp, or arbitrary shell commands.
Expand All @@ -48,3 +52,17 @@ Host exe.dev *.exe.xyz
IdentitiesOnly yes
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
```

**Multi-line commands**: Heredocs and embedded newlines collapse when passed inside a quoted argument to `ssh <vm>.exe.xyz "<cmd>"` from many shells (`\n` flattens to spaces, breaking scripts). Feed multi-line scripts via `bash -s` over stdin instead:

```
ssh <vm>.exe.xyz 'bash -s' <<'EOF'
set -e
sudo apt-get update
# ...
EOF
```

For non-text content (binaries, anything sensitive to whitespace), base64-encode locally and decode on the VM.

**Lobby-routed VM shell**: `ssh exe.dev ssh <vm> "<cmd>"` runs a shell command on the VM via the lobby. Convenient in non-interactive scripts — the lobby's host key is already trusted, so there's no per-VM `known_hosts` setup or `accept-new` prompt. (No scp/sftp through this path; use direct `<vm>.exe.xyz` for transfers.)