SSH Agent Forwarding

SSH agent forwarding lets agents inside the container use your host SSH keys for git operations and commit signing — without copying private keys into the container.

Setup

Enable it in your config:

{
  "sshForwarding": true
}

Or per-invocation:

sj claude --sshForwarding

How It Works

Linux

The host's SSH_AUTH_SOCK socket is bind-mounted directly into the container. Simple and fast.

macOS

macOS uses virtiofs to share files with the Podman VM, which can't mount Unix sockets. Straight Jacket works around this automatically:

1. Opens an SSH reverse tunnel into the Podman VM
2. Forwards your host's SSH_AUTH_SOCK to a socket inside the VM
3. Bind-mounts that VM socket into the container

This happens transparently — you just set sshForwarding: true and it works.

Rootless Podman recommended

SSH agent forwarding works best with rootless Podman, which is needed for --userns=keep-id to map file ownership correctly.