ssh-config

SSH client config for macOS, Linux and Windows: per-host key selection for GitHub, agent settings and an allowed signers example for verifying signed commits.

A dedicated auth key per host, a separate signing key and an allowed_signers list that covers every machine you sign from. This repo holds the client-side config and never a private key, so a new machine gets the correct setup in a few steps.

What's here

• <platform>/config - Host blocks pointing github.com and gist.github.com at a dedicated auth key with IdentitiesOnly yes, so SSH never falls back to offering the wrong key first. AddKeysToAgent yes means a passphrase is only asked for once per session.
• <platform>/*.placeholder.pub - where each machine's public keys go. Every placeholder carries the ssh-keygen command for that platform and the filename to use: <platform>/<key>.<device-name>.pub, one file per machine, since several machines can share a platform folder. Public keys only, never the private half.
• allowed_signers.example - the format of the file Git reads to verify SSH commit signatures locally, with placeholders for your own email and public key. See guides/reference.md.
• .gitignore - blocks any filename shaped like a private key, as a backstop.

The one per-platform difference

UseKeychain yes is an Apple-only OpenSSH directive that stores key passphrases in the macOS Keychain, so it only appears in mac/config. OpenSSH on Linux and Windows rejects that line as an unknown option, so linux/ and windows/ drop it and rely on ssh-agent alone.

Caution

None of this ships a private key. Nothing here should ever hold one. .gitignore blocks private-key-shaped filenames and CI fails on any private key header in the tree.

Setup

git clone https://github.com/zaccesss/ssh-config.git ~/.ssh-config-src
cp ~/.ssh-config-src/<platform>/config ~/.ssh/config
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config

Replace <platform> with mac, linux or windows. See guides/setup.md for generating your own key pairs and setting up allowed_signers.

Structure

Path	Contents
mac/	Config with UseKeychain, public key placeholders
linux/	Config without UseKeychain, public key placeholders
windows/	Config without UseKeychain, public key placeholders
allowed_signers.example	Allowed signers format with placeholders
guides/	Key generation walkthrough and reference