Sites & tags

Two ways to organize hosts:

• Tags — free-form, many per host (prod, db, web). Pure labels: filter with tag:NAME, repeatable and ANDed.
• A site — one per host (a data center, a project, a customer). Sites group the idle list, filter with site:NAME — and can optionally carry shared SSH defaults that member hosts inherit.

Site defaults & inheritance

A site may define a default user, port, jump host(s) (the site’s bastion), and identity file(s). At connect time each member host is resolved against them:

• the site’s value fills in only where the host leaves that field unset — the host always wins;
• auth is never inherited — it stays per-host;
• a bare site (name only) is pure grouping.

Inherited defaults show up everywhere the command does: connect, Ctrl-y yank, sshelf print-command, transfers, forwards. A host that names an undefined site still groups under that name — it just inherits nothing.

In the list

Idle (empty search box): hosts group under ── site (n) ── headers, with (no site) last. While filtering: a flat list with a dim ·site· column; site:NAME narrows to one site.

Managing sites (F3)

a add · e/Enter edit · d delete · Ctrl-s save · Esc cancel. Each site’s form is a name plus the optional defaults. Renaming a site updates its member hosts; deleting one clears its members’ site — nothing dangles. Assign a host’s site in the add/edit form (←/→ over the defined sites + (none)).

From the CLI

sshelf sites                                        # sites, member counts, their defaults
sshelf sites --json                                 # machine-readable
sshelf sites add prod-dc -u deploy -J bastion.prod  # define a site with shared defaults
sshelf add web1 -H 10.0.0.4 --site prod-dc          # add a host into it
sshelf list site:prod-dc                            # filter by site

Storage: [[site]] entries in hosts.toml — see Data model & files.