Show HN: Cush – curl your shell, an HTTP tunnel for AI agents

3 points

2 months ago

I built cush because coding agents can be helpful to diagnose and troubleshoot server issues.

The problem is that getting said agents onto a remote server, especially one you don't control, means dealing with VPNs, bastion hosts, firewall rules, access controls, or audit trails. That's assuming SSH isn't even blocked.

cush takes a different approach. Instead of a shell, it opens a temporary, outbound HTTPS tunnel that lets you and your AI agent run constrained CLI commands on the server:

  $ cush open --allow grep,cat,tail --expiry 2h

    tunnel:   https://abc123.ngrok.io
    token:    a3f9c2d1...
    allowed:  grep, cat, tail
    expires:  in 2h

Now any agent or HTTP client can execute allowed commands:

  $ curl -X POST https://abc123.ngrok.io \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer a3f9c2d1..." \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"command": ["grep", "-r", "ERROR", "/var/log/app.log"]}'

  >>> {"stdout":"ERROR database connection refused\n","stderr":"","exit_code":0}

Point any agent at the tunnel's URL:

  $ claude "use https://abc123.ngrok.io with token a3f9c2d1... to find what's causing the 500 errors"

Tunnels are authenticated, constrained, and short-lived. No server-side infrastructure changes required. Just a 7MB Rust binary + ngrok.

Looking for feedback, and 2-3 design partners to build audit trails.