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Connect with SSH

Last updated 3 November 2026

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Machines are not open yet. These pages describe Machines as they will open; until then, a create answers region_not_offered (422), “Machines are not offered in any region yet.”

Open a terminal in a Machine with ssh, copy files with sftp, or connect an editor that works over SSH, with a short-lived certificate Tonbo signs for your key. There are no keys to register and none to remove.

Planned Not served yet. This page describes how it will work, as decided; until it is served, the certificate requests answer 404 at https://api.tonbo.dev/v1, and Machines take no SSH login. The Machines API reference lists each operation, marked Planned.

Connect

# A key for Tonbo, once
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/tonbo -N ""

# A certificate for it, valid 12 hours by default
curl -sS https://api.tonbo.dev/v1/ssh/certificates \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TONBO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"public_key\": \"$(cat ~/.ssh/tonbo.pub)\"}" \
  | jq -r .data.certificate > ~/.ssh/tonbo-cert.pub

# Trust Tonbo's host keys, once
curl -sS https://api.tonbo.dev/v1/ssh/host-ca -H "Authorization: Bearer $TONBO_API_KEY" >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts

# Connect
ssh -i ~/.ssh/tonbo hello.<account>@tonbo.sh

The user is the Machine’s name and your account’s name, and the host is the same for every region. A login wakes an asleep Machine, with the same checks and credit as any wake, and runs as the image’s user.

Certificates

  • A certificate names one account and is valid for ttl_seconds: 12 hours by default, from 5 minutes to 24 hours, and never past the expiry of the token that asked for it. It needs a key that is not narrowed.
  • Keys are ssh-ed25519 or ecdsa-sha2-nistp256; any other type answers 422 certificate_key_unsupported.
  • GET /v1/ssh/certificates lists your live ones, and DELETE /v1/ssh/certificates/<id> revokes one; owners and admins may list and revoke anyone’s. Revoking the key that asked for a certificate revokes it too. Logins stop within 60 seconds of a revocation.
  • The host lines name the current host key and the next, so a rotation never breaks your known_hosts.

What a session can do

  • A shell, a terminal, a command, sftp, and remote forwarding (-R).
  • Local forwarding (-L) to a port on the Machine’s own loopback only. Dynamic forwarding (-D), agent forwarding and X11 are off, so a Machine never becomes a proxy.
  • Jump hosts (ProxyJump) work.
  • Typing keeps the Machine awake; a session left idle closes when the Machine would sleep.

Every login after a sleep starts fresh

Each wake starts the Machine from its image, so a home directory outside the Volume is new at every login after a sleep, and so is anything you installed there. Keep work on the Volume, and state in the database (see What lasts).

Who sees the session

Tonbo’s edge ends the SSH connection and opens one to the Machine, so it handles your session in the clear, as it handles a request to a private port over HTTPS (see Isolation guarantees).