ssh-inspect

Shows the SSH configuration that applies to a given hostname, separating global (Host *) settings from host-specific ones. Only user-defined options are shown — SSH built-in defaults are excluded.

Install

mise

mise use -g github:davidolrik/ssh-inspect

go install

go install github.com/davidolrik/ssh-inspect@latest

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/davidolrik/ssh-inspect.git
cd ssh-inspect
go build -o ssh-inspect .

Usage

ssh-inspect <hostname>

Example

$ ssh-inspect myserver
Host *
    AddKeysToAgent       true
    ControlMaster        auto
    ControlPath          ~/.ssh/control/%h__%p__%r
    IdentityFile         ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

Host myserver
    Hostname             myserver.example.com
    User                 deploy
    Port                 2222
    IdentityFile         ~/.ssh/deploy_key
    ProxyJump            bastion

The output is a valid SSH config format. Host * options are shown first (sorted alphabetically), followed by host-specific blocks with priority keys (Hostname, User, Port, IdentityFile, ProxyJump) listed first. If the host uses ProxyJump, each hop in the chain gets its own block.

When stdout is a terminal, output is syntax-highlighted with ANSI colors. Set NO_COLOR to disable.

Shell completion

Tab completion for hostnames is available, sourced from your SSH config and known_hosts files.

# Bash
ssh-inspect completion bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/ssh-inspect

# Zsh
ssh-inspect completion zsh > "${fpath[1]}/_ssh-inspect"

# Fish
ssh-inspect completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/ssh-inspect.fish

How it works

ssh-inspect uses ssh -G to query the fully resolved SSH configuration for a hostname. To isolate user-defined settings from SSH defaults, it queries a random non-matching hostname as a baseline and diffs the two. Host * and Match all blocks are detected by temporarily modifying the config so the baseline hostname is excluded from wildcard matching. Raw (un-interpolated) values are preserved for wildcard options that contain tokens like %h or %p.

Requirements

• OpenSSH ssh in PATH
• Go 1.26.1 or later (to build from source)