VS Code & Cursor

Open your vybn VM as a remote workspace in VS Code or Cursor — one command, no manual SSH config.

Prerequisites

• A deployed and running vybn VM (vybn deploy)
• VS Code with the Remote - SSH extension, or Cursor (has Remote SSH built in)

Setup

vybn code

That’s it. On first run, vybn:

1. Writes a managed SSH config block to ~/.ssh/config
2. Detects your editor (Cursor or VS Code)
3. Opens it connected to the VM

If neither editor CLI is found, vybn writes the SSH config and prints manual instructions.

How it works

vybn adds a Host vybn block to your ~/.ssh/config:

# vybn-start — managed by vybn, do not edit
Host vybn
  HostName bright-falcon
  User claude
  IdentityFile ~/.vybn/ssh/id_ed25519
  UserKnownHostsFile ~/.vybn/ssh/known_hosts
  StrictHostKeyChecking accept-new
  ForwardAgent yes
  ServerAliveInterval 5
  ServerAliveCountMax 3
# vybn-end

The block is managed between # vybn-start / # vybn-end markers. vybn updates it when your configuration changes and removes it when you run vybn destroy.

The Remote SSH extension reads ~/.ssh/config and sees vybn as a connectable host.

Opening specific projects

# Open a session's registered directory
vybn code myproject

# Open an explicit path
vybn code --path /opt/app

# No args — auto-detects from current directory name
vybn code

With no arguments, vybn checks if basename $PWD matches a session name on the VM. If it does, it prompts to open that path. Otherwise it opens $VYBN_PROJECTS_DIR.

Editor selection

vybn auto-detects your editor — it looks for cursor first, then code in your PATH.

To choose explicitly, set VYBN_EDITOR in ~/.vybnrc:

VYBN_EDITOR="code"     # Always use VS Code
VYBN_EDITOR="cursor"   # Always use Cursor

Backend-specific notes

Tailscale

Works out of the box. The SSH config uses your Tailscale hostname and vybn-managed SSH keys.

IAP

The SSH config uses a ProxyCommand that invokes gcloud compute ssh with --tunnel-through-iap. This requires gcloud to be installed and authenticated on your local machine.

ProxyCommand gcloud compute ssh %r@vm-name --zone=us-west1-a --project=my-project --tunnel-through-iap --plain -- -W %h:%p

SSH provider

Uses your configured VYBN_SSH_HOST, VYBN_SSH_PORT, and VYBN_SSH_KEY directly.

Troubleshooting

Verify SSH connectivity

Before debugging the editor, confirm that raw SSH works:

ssh vybn

If this connects successfully, the issue is with the editor extension, not the SSH config.

Check the SSH config

# View the managed block
sed -n '/vybn-start/,/vybn-end/p' ~/.ssh/config

Extension not connecting

• Make sure the Remote SSH extension is installed (VS Code) or up to date (Cursor)
• Try the VS Code command palette: Remote-SSH: Connect to Host… and select vybn
• Check the Remote SSH output panel for error details

Regenerate SSH config

If the config is stale or corrupted, just run vybn code again — it rewrites the block if anything has changed.