A local-first SSH workspace that survives your WiFi hiccups

What it does

OxideTerm is a desktop SSH workspace built in Rust and Tauri that wraps terminals, SFTP, port forwarding, a lightweight IDE, and a BYOK AI assistant into a single native app. It connects to local shells and remote machines over a pure Rust SSH stack, stores credentials in the OS keychain, and encrypts local exports with ChaCha20-Poly1305. Core SSH workflows require no user account and no subscription.

The interesting bit

The standout is the reconnect logic: instead of killing your session the instant the network blinks, OxideTerm snapshots terminal panes, transfers, and forwards, then probes the old connection for 30 seconds before declaring it dead. If the WiFi recovers, vim, htop, or yazi resume untouched; if not, it restores everything on a new connection without scattering reconnect code across the UI. Under the hood, the SSH stack is pure Rust via russh compiled against ring, which means zero OpenSSL or libssh2 dependencies to chase down.

Key highlights

• Grace Period reconnect keeps TUI sessions alive through 30-second network drops by probing the old SSH pipe before swapping to a new one.
• Dual-plane architecture splits terminal data (binary WebSocket) from control commands (Tauri IPC) so the hot path avoids JSON serialization overhead.
• BYOK AI assistant OxideSens plugs into your own OpenAI, Ollama, or DeepSeek endpoint and can inspect live sessions or run approved commands without an OxideTerm account.
• Pure Rust SSH implementation using russh 0.59 with Ed25519/RSA/ECDSA support, SSH agent forwarding, and ProxyJump chains.
• Local-first by default: cloud sync is opt-in via plugin, and passwords or API keys stay in the OS keychain.

Caveats

• The built-in IDE mode relies on an optional remote agent for Linux, and users on unsupported architectures must manually build and upload it.

Verdict

If your remote workflow involves SSH, SFTP, and port forwarding over unreliable networks, OxideTerm is a rare native alternative to Electron-based clients. If you just need a bare terminal emulator, it is more workspace than you need.