drive-remote-terminal¶

Teach Claude Code to operate an interactive full-screen terminal program (a TUI) on a remote machine over SSH — for people who automate work on servers, dev boxes, and headless hosts.

Install¶

/plugin marketplace add 88plug/drive-remote-terminal
/plugin install drive-remote-terminal@drive-remote-terminal

Or from a local clone:

git clone https://github.com/88plug/drive-remote-terminal
/plugin marketplace add ./drive-remote-terminal
/plugin install drive-remote-terminal@drive-remote-terminal

Requires tmux (or screen) and ssh on the path — all standard.

Quickstart¶

Once installed, ask Claude Code to drive a remote TUI and it follows the bundled loop:

SSH into build-01 and run `htop`, then tell me which process is using the most memory.

Claude starts a tmux session on the remote host, launches the program, captures the screen, reads it, and reports back — the same type-wait-look loop a human uses. You see a real rendering of the remote screen in the answer, not a blind command result.

What it does and why¶

You can't drive a TUI with one-shot SSH. ssh host 'cmd' runs and exits; piping into a full-screen program that needs a real PTY fails. This plugin uses tmux (or screen as a fallback) to give the agent both a way to type and eyes to see, so it can operate the Claude Code TUI, vim, top, curses installers, REPLs, or any program that needs a real PTY over SSH — the way a human would: type a keystroke, look at the screen, decide the next move.

The technique¶

The whole skill is one loop:

Type — tmux send-keys -t SESSION 'text' Enter
Wait — sleep N (let the app redraw)
Screenshot — tmux capture-pane -t SESSION -p (this is the screenshot)
Read and decide — look at the captured screen, then send the next input

Plus the hard-won rules: always screenshot after acting, always wait before you screenshot, never double-send on an unexpected screen, submit a stuck line with a standalone Enter, and confirm the program actually launched before sending keys (or they fall through to the shell).

Tip

The wait step matters more than it looks. Capturing the pane before the app has redrawn returns a stale screen, which leads the agent to act on the wrong state.

What it bundles¶

One skill (drive-remote-terminal) that teaches a method — no scripts, no MCP, no hooks. It ships reference files for:

The full tmux key and capture-pane table
A GNU screen fallback playbook
Advanced SSH connection reuse and deterministic sync

Contributing¶

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Open an issue to discuss a change before sending a large pull request, and keep edits to the skill focused on the method it teaches.