SSH config

Bast treats your SSH config as the source of truth. It does not replace OpenSSH or maintain a separate host database.

First run

On first use, Bast prepends a single line to your main SSH config:

Include ~/.ssh/bast/config

New hosts you create through Bast are written to that managed file. Everything else stays where it already lives.

Discovery

Bast discovers hosts from your main config and every file it includes. Externally managed blocks keep their original source path. Bast-managed blocks are marked so you know which ones it owns.

Labels and aliases

Display labels with spaces (like "Production web") map to safe OpenSSH alias names automatically. You can connect with either the label or the alias from the shell:

bast "Production web"
bast Production_web

What Bast stores separately

Presentation metadata (groups, tags, colors, notes, favorites, recency) lives in bast/state.json under your OS user config directory. Connection settings live in SSH config files where they belong.

Back up ~/.ssh before testing unreleased builds against a production config.