Grouping connections

Groups keep related connections together without changing how you connect. Names are case-insensitive, groups are flat, and each connection can belong to multiple groups.

Press Tab or Shift+Tab to switch focus between the left connection/form pane and the right group pane.

_{Grouping pane selected in dssh TUI}

Create and manage groups

In the TUI, focus the group pane in Connect, the Edit list, or Delete:

Key	Action
Ctrl+N	Create a group
Ctrl+R	Rename the selected group
Ctrl+D	Delete the selected group and its memberships

Deleting a group never deletes its connections.

The same lifecycle is available from the CLI:

dssh group create Production
dssh group rename Production Live
dssh group list
dssh group delete Live

Deletion is immediate. See the group command reference for every command and its exact behavior.

Assign connections

In the TUI

Create and an active Edit form show Assign Groups in the right pane. Press Space to toggle a membership, Ctrl+N to create and assign a group, then Ctrl+S to save from either pane.

Leaving the form without saving discards assignment changes.

_{Assigning groups to new connection via right pane}

From the CLI

Assign existing groups while adding a connection:

dssh add api --group Production --group Europe deploy@api.example.com

Or update existing connections as a batch:

dssh group assign Production api web
dssh group unassign Production web

Groups passed to dssh add must already exist. Assignment commands validate the group and every named connection before changing memberships.

See Manage connections for add syntax and flags.

Filter connections

In Connect, the Edit list, and Delete, the right pane filters connections by group. Select a group to apply it immediately.

The pinned (No Groups) row removes the group filter and shows every connection. It does not mean “show only unassigned connections.”

_{Filtering connections for "Chads" group}

CLI filters cover both single-group and automation workflows:

dssh list --group Production
dssh list --group Production --group Staging
dssh list --ungrouped

Repeated --group flags use OR semantics. --ungrouped means no memberships in the active source and cannot be combined with --group.

See Manage connections for list output, JSON, and empty-result behavior.

Groups in both mode

Group definitions are global SQLite metadata. Memberships are source-scoped, so equally named SQLite and ssh_config connections can belong to different groups.

ssh_config memberships are also tied to the configured file path. Switching to another file does not carry those memberships across.

Reads span active sources. Membership writes in configured both mode require one explicit source:

dssh --sqlite group assign Production api
dssh --sshconfig group assign Production api

--both is invalid for membership writes. Use dssh group list to see counts for the active source or both source counts in both mode.

For every TUI shortcut, see TUI keybindings. For nesting and other boundaries, see Limitations.