webfactory/ssh-agent

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1482 stars · 298 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

A GitHub Action that starts ssh-agent on the workflow runner, exports SSH_AUTH_SOCK, and loads one or more private SSH keys from repository secrets. It enables git clone over SSH from private repositories and SSH access to other servers during CI workflows.

Use cases

• load ssh private key in github actions workflow
• clone private repositories during ci
• use multiple github deploy keys in one workflow
• set up ssh-agent on github actions runner
• ssh into servers from a github actions job

When to choose

• your GitHub Actions workflow needs to fetch dependencies from private repos via SSH
• you need multiple deploy keys mapped to different repositories in one workflow
• you want a simple, maintained action for SSH key setup in CI

When to avoid

• you use HTTPS with tokens instead of SSH for private repo access
• you need SSH key setup outside GitHub Actions
• you require passphrase-protected keys

Facets

plugin · maturity active

ssh auth ci-cd secrets-management developer-tools developer-tools security windows cli github-action ssh-agent deploy-keys private-repositories workflow-step devops automation linux macos docker

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="webfactory/ssh-agent")