SSH from your own terminal

You do not need the desktop to work in a VM. The daemon speaks SSH, so your own terminal, scp and your scripts reach a VM directly, and a coding agent runs its commands in a VM the same way.

Connect

The daemon's SSH gate listens on port 2222, and the username picks where you land:

• A VM's name lands you in that VM, as its user: a full SSH session. A stopped VM is started first, and scp, sftp and -L/-R forwarding all work.
• exe lands you in the lobby, which runs commands for the VMs themselves and has no shell.

ssh -p 2222 demo@this-host        # into the VM "demo" (auto-starts it)
scp -P 2222 app.py demo@this-host:~/          # scp, sftp, -L/-R all work
ssh -p 2222 -L 8000:localhost:8000 demo@this-host   # tunnel a VM port

ssh -p 2222 exe@this-host         # the lobby, at its prompt
ssh -p 2222 exe@this-host ls --json           # or one lobby command

The port is ssh_listen in Windows → Configuration; off there turns the gate off.

The lobby

The lobby's commands are ls, new, start, stop, rm, ip, code, expose, unexpose and routes, and help lists them with their arguments. ls, new, start and routes take --json, for scripts and agents.

code runs the built-in agent in a VM, and expose publishes a VM port. The coding agent and Publishing to the web say more.

Keys that get in

• Any public key in the daemon user's ~/.ssh.
• The service key in ~/.exe/ssh/.
• Keys listed in ~/.exe/ssh/authorized_clients, in authorized_keys format. Add your phone or laptop key there; edits apply immediately.

There is no first-come key adoption, so the gate is safe to leave on a LAN.