Feature request / question: Support for remote Docker host (SSH containers)

[kenfdev]

Question

Is there a plan to support running sandbox containers on a remote Docker host (e.g., via SSH or Unix socket forwarding)?

What I Tried

I wanted to run discobot on macOS while having the actual containers execute on a remote Linux host (WSL over SSH).

Blocker 1 — macOS always uses VZ, ignoring DOCKER_HOST

server/cmd/server/main.go registers providers based on OS:

if runtime.GOOS == "darwin" && cfg.DockerHost == "" { // ← i changed this part to force Mac to use docker when DockerHost is set
    // VZ (Virtualization.framework) is registered
} else {
    // Docker is registered
}

---

Blocker 2 — DOCKER_HOST=ssh://... fails with Go SDK

When using DOCKER_HOST=ssh://wsl, the Go Docker SDK tries to resolve wsl via DNS, which fails because it's an ~/.ssh/config alias, not a real hostname.

Workaround: SSH socket forwarding avoids this entirely:

# Terminal 1 — forward the remote Docker socket locally
ssh -N -L /tmp/docker-wsl.sock:/var/run/docker.sock wsl

# Terminal 2 — start the server pointing at the forwarded socket
DOCKER_HOST=unix:///tmp/docker-wsl.sock pnpm dev:server

With this workaround, the container does start on the remote host.

---

Blocker 3 — Agent API is unreachable from the server

The server appears to contact the Agent API at localhost:<port>, but when the container runs on a remote host, localhost no longer reaches it. Requests hang or fail.

---

Ask

1. Is remote Docker host support something you plan to add?
2. Is there a recommended workaround for the Agent API reachability issue in the meantime?

Thanks for a great project!

[ibuildthecloud]

I'll work on a proper feature for this. But this is the workaround that I do because I actually run the GUI in windows with the backend on a big linux machine. I don't work on macs.

Setup ssh port fowards.
ssh -L 3000:linux-host:3000 -L 3001:linux-host:3001 -L 3333:linux-host:3333
Then on the linux host run "pnpm i && pnpm dev"

Then on your localhost run "pnpm tauri dev"

[kenfdev]

This worked 👍 Although the command for me (on my mac) was:

ssh -L 3000:localhost:3000 -L 3001:localhost:3001 -L 3333:localhost:3333 linux-host

Opening Zed on my mac worked as well 💯

Somehow the "Preview" pane doesn't work, but opening it with the browser does (not a big problem though)