Hopline

A lightweight SSH, SFTP and serial terminal for Windows, with a built-in MCP server so AI assistants can work in your sessions while you watch.

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▶ Watch the 30-second demo video

Hopline keeps the parts of a network engineer's terminal you use every day (saved sessions, tabs, SFTP, serial consoles, multi-exec) in a single ~16 MB executable. It is written in Go with Wails and renders terminals with xterm.js.

Features

Sessions and terminals

• Saved SSH, Telnet and serial sessions in nested folders (drag & drop, rename, connect all), with search and keyboard navigation
• Tabs you can reorder, rename and duplicate, and a split view with two or four tabs side by side; quick connect with user@host[:port] or telnet host
• Import sessions from MobaXterm, PuTTY, SecureCRT and Xshell; back up and restore sessions, macros and settings (passwords optionally, encrypted with a passphrase)
• Password, private-key and keyboard-interactive auth; an option for legacy key exchange and ciphers used by older switches and firewalls
• Passwords are encrypted with Windows DPAPI, so only your Windows account can decrypt them
• Trust-on-first-use host keys: a changed key blocks the connection and tells you which line to remove
• Connection overlay with a cancel button, and a reconnect bar when a session drops

Files and consoles

• SFTP side panel for the active tab: breadcrumbs, upload by button or drag and drop, download, rename, delete, new folder
• Serial (COM) console with baud rate, data bits, parity and stop bits
• Built-in TFTP server for firmware upgrades and config backups, limited to one folder

Working on many devices

• Multi-exec: type once into every checked tab
• Macros: named command lists sent line by line with a configurable delay; pin them to the command bar under the tabs for one-click buttons (Alt+1–9), with {{variables}} asked at run time and an optional confirmation
• Logon actions: expect/send steps run after connecting (enable, console login, jump hosts), with hidden values encrypted
• Built-in updates: notices new releases, verifies the download and restarts into the new version
• Keeps running in the tray when the window is closed, so the MCP server and connections stay up; optional start with Windows
• Keyword highlighting for device output (down/error, up, warnings, IP/MAC, interface names) with editable rules
• Session logs: record every session automatically or per session, one folder per device, a timestamp on every line, and a log browser with search across all logs

AI built in (uses your installed Claude Code, no API key)

• AI assistant panel (Ctrl+Shift+A) that reads the current tab's screen; suggested commands come with Insert / Run buttons, and commands that change configuration are only inserted
• Select output in the terminal and click Ask AI to have it explained
• AI work summary of a session log: commands run, changes, problems seen
• Scheduled checks: at set times Hopline connects in the background, runs read-only commands, saves the output and lets the AI compare it with the previous run

Comfort

• Dark and light themes, seven terminal color schemes, UI size (90–150%), font, size, line height and cursor settings
• Find in terminal (Ctrl+Shift+F), zoom (Ctrl + = / -), status bar with size, transfer and multi-exec state
• English and Korean UI, following your Windows language by default

SFTP panel	Settings

Light theme and find	An AI assistant typing through MCP

MCP integration

Hopline can run a local Model Context Protocol server so an AI client such as Claude Code can open your saved sessions and run commands. Everything happens in visible tabs: the tab comes to the front and shows an AI badge while commands are sent.

1. Click MCP in the toolbar and press Connect to Claude Code. Hopline turns its server on (127.0.0.1:7781 only, bearer token), registers it with Claude Code and installs the hopline skill, which teaches Claude a safe way to work on devices (check open tabs first, read-only by default, approval before changes, a summary table at the end).
   • No claude command on this PC? Press Copy setup prompt for Claude instead and paste it into a Claude Code chat; Claude runs the registration and saves the skill itself.
   • Prefer doing it by hand? The dialog also shows the plain claude mcp add ... command.
2. Open a new Claude Code session. Keep Hopline running and ask your assistant, for example: "Use hopline to open core-sw01 and show the interface status. Read-only commands only."

Tool	What it does
list_sessions, list_tabs	Saved sessions and connected tabs, including tabs you opened yourself; the one you are looking at is marked (active)
open_session	Reuse the session's open tab, or open and connect a new one (new: true forces a new tab)
run_command	Send a command and return its output; detects the prompt, supports an expect regex and answers --More-- pagers automatically
send_keys, read_output	Interactive input (Ctrl+C, y/n) and reading the current screen
sftp_list, sftp_read_file, sftp_write_file, sftp_download, sftp_upload	File operations over the tab's SSH connection
run_on_tabs	Run one command on many tabs or saved sessions in parallel and get each output back
close_tab	Disconnect and close a tab

Every tab tool also accepts tab: "active", so you can connect yourself and simply say "run show version in my current tab".

Saved passwords never pass through MCP. If a session has no saved password, Hopline asks you for it in its own window while the assistant waits.

Download

Grab Hopline.zip from the latest release, unzip it anywhere and run Hopline.exe; there is no installer. The bare .exe is attached too, for networks that allow it and for the built-in updater of older versions. It runs on Windows 10/11 with the WebView2 runtime (built into Windows 11).

The executable is not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn on first launch: choose More info → Run anyway. The release notes list the SHA-256 so you can verify the download.

With Scoop you can install and update it from the command line:

scoop install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/minhyeok2487/Hopline/main/bucket/hopline.json

New to Hopline? Read the user guide: sessions, SFTP, serial, multi-exec, macros, MCP setup and troubleshooting.

Build from source

You need Go 1.25+, Node.js 20+ and the Wails v2 CLI:

go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest

wails build

The executable is written to build/bin/Hopline.exe. Use wails dev for a live-reloading development build.

Security model

Hopline lets an AI assistant type into real devices, so the defaults are conservative:

• The AI never sees saved passwords. Sessions connect with credentials stored in Hopline (encrypted with Windows DPAPI). When a password is missing, Hopline asks you in its own window.
• Local only, token protected. The MCP server is off until you enable it, listens on 127.0.0.1 only, rejects requests without the bearer token and has DNS-rebinding protection. Regenerating the token revokes the old one.
• Everything is visible. Every AI command runs in a normal tab that comes to the front with an AI badge, and you can type, press Ctrl+C or close the tab at any time.
• Host keys are pinned. A changed SSH host key blocks the connection instead of silently continuing.
• Least privilege still matters. Give the AI device accounts with only the rights it needs, and say "read-only commands only" when that is what you want.

Where data is stored

What	Location
Sessions, macros, settings	%APPDATA%\Hopline\data.json
Known host keys	%APPDATA%\Hopline\known_hosts
Session logs	Documents\Hopline\logs\<session>\ (changeable in Settings)
Scheduled check results	Documents\Hopline\logs\_checks\<check>\<run>\

Keyboard shortcuts

Keys	Action
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Next / previous tab
Ctrl+Shift+F	Find in terminal
Ctrl + = / Ctrl + - / Ctrl+0	Font size up / down / reset
Ctrl+Shift+B	Show or hide the sidebar
Ctrl+Shift+A	AI assistant panel
Alt+1 … Alt+9	Run a command bar button
Ctrl+,	Settings
Drag / right-click	Copy / paste (Shift+right-click opens the menu)

Project layout

Path	Purpose
app.go	Connection manager, terminal I/O events, macros
logs.go	Session logs: recording, browsing, search
ai.go, checks.go	AI assistant via the Claude Code CLI, scheduled checks
ssh.go, sftp.go, serial.go	SSH sessions and host keys, SFTP, serial ports
mcp.go, outtap.go	MCP server and tools, output capture
store.go, dpapi_windows.go	Session storage and password encryption
i18n.go, frontend/src/i18n.js	English and Korean messages
frontend/src/	UI (vanilla JS, xterm.js)

License

MIT