Nexus Terminal

Unified SSH, Serial, and Port Forwarding hub for VS Code.

Manage remote servers, serial devices, and TCP tunnels from a single sidebar — with SSH connection multiplexing, a settings panel, macro editor, session logging, drag-and-drop organization, and configuration import/export.

Features

• SSH Terminal Sessions — Connect to remote servers with password, key, or SSH agent authentication. Supports two-factor authentication (keyboard-interactive) — passwords auto-fill while verification codes are prompted separately. Credentials are cached securely via VS Code SecretStorage with silent re-auth.
• Serial Terminal Sessions — Connect to serial ports (COM/ttyUSB) with configurable baud rate, data bits, parity, and stop bits. Runs in an isolated sidecar process for crash safety.
• Port Forwarding (TCP Tunnels) — Three tunnel modes: Local (-L) forwards local ports to remote hosts, Reverse (-R) forwards remote ports back to local targets, and Dynamic (-D) provides a local SOCKS5 proxy through SSH. Shared mode (default) uses a single SSH connection for all clients; isolated mode creates a separate connection per client.
• SSH Connection Multiplexing — Share SSH connections across terminals, tunnels, and SFTP for the same server. Reduces connection overhead with automatic ref-counting and configurable idle timeout. Per-server toggle lets you disable multiplexing for devices that don't support multiple channels (e.g. Cisco). When multiplexing is enabled, automatic fallback to standalone connections handles channel failures transparently.
• Connectivity Hub — Sidebar tree view showing all servers and serial devices, organized into folders with nesting support. Drag and drop to rearrange or assign tunnels to servers.
• Settings Panel — View and edit extension settings in a dedicated webview panel. Declarative metadata drives the UI with auto-save, search, and grouped categories.
• Session Transcript Logging — Automatically log clean terminal output (ANSI codes stripped) to files with configurable rotation.
• Terminal Highlighting — Configurable regex-based pattern highlighting for SSH and serial terminal output. Detects errors, warnings, IP addresses, UUIDs, URLs and more with inline ANSI colouring while respecting existing remote colours.
• Terminal Macros — Define reusable text sequences and send them to the active terminal with one click or keyboard shortcut. Assign any macro a custom keybinding from 108 supported combinations across three modifier groups: Alt, Alt+Shift, and Ctrl+Shift with A-Z or 0-9 keys (e.g., Alt+M, Alt+Shift+5, Ctrl+Shift+A). Unassigned keybindings fall through to normal VS Code behavior. Macros without a keybinding can still be invoked via Alt+S, which opens a quick-pick list of all macros. Includes a Macro Editor webview panel with multiline editing, secret macro support, and inline keybinding assignment. Legacy slot (0-9) assignments are auto-migrated to the new keybinding system on first load.
• Configuration Export/Import — Back up and restore all profiles and settings as a single JSON file.
• Web Extension Fallback — Graceful degradation in browser-based VS Code (SSH/serial require desktop runtime).

Getting Started

Install from VS Code Marketplace

1. Open VS Code and go to the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X)
2. Search for NexTerminal
3. Click Install
4. Open the Nexus sidebar (activity bar icon)

Install from VSIX

1. Download the .vsix from GitHub Releases
2. In VS Code: Extensions > ... > Install from VSIX...
3. Open the Nexus sidebar (activity bar icon)

Add a Server

1. Click + in the Connectivity Hub title bar, or run Nexus: Add Server from the command palette
2. Enter host, port, username, and authentication details (password, private key, or SSH agent)
3. Right-click the server and select Connect to open a terminal session

Add a Serial Device

1. Click the serial icon in the Connectivity Hub title bar, or run Nexus: Add Serial Profile
2. Use Scan Serial Ports to discover available ports
3. Configure baud rate, data bits, parity, and stop bits
4. Right-click the profile and select Connect

Set Up Port Forwarding

1. Switch to the Port Forwarding section in the sidebar
2. Click + to add a tunnel profile and choose the type:
   • Local Forward (-L): specify local port, remote host, and remote port
   • Reverse Forward (-R): specify remote bind address/port and local target host/port
   • Dynamic SOCKS5 (-D): specify local port (default 1080) — routes traffic to any destination through SSH
3. Assign an SSH server to the tunnel, or leave it unassigned to choose at start time
4. Right-click the tunnel and select Start

You can also drag a tunnel profile onto a server in the Connectivity Hub to start it immediately.

Export / Import Configuration

• Run Nexus: Export Configuration to save all profiles and settings to a JSON file
• Run Nexus: Import Configuration to restore from a backup (merge or replace)

Import from MobaXterm or SecureCRT

Power users migrating from other SSH clients can import their connection profiles directly:

• MobaXterm: Run Nexus: Import from MobaXterm and select your MobaXterm .ini configuration file. SSH sessions are imported with their folder organization preserved.
• SecureCRT: Run Nexus: Import from SecureCRT and select either your SecureCRT XML export file (for example SecureCRTSessions.xml) or your Sessions/ directory. SSH sessions are imported with their hierarchy as folder groups.

Both importers extract hostname, port, and username from each SSH session. Non-SSH sessions (RDP, Telnet, etc.) are skipped. Imported servers default to password authentication.

Development

npm install
npm run build
npm test

To package a VSIX:

npm run package:vsix

Key Settings

Documentation

See docs/functional-documentation.md for detailed architecture and design documentation.

License

Apache 2.0