SSH Snippets & Scheduled Commands

Save reusable shell commands as Tempest Snippets and run them on a schedule across one or many SSH hosts, with cross-device notifications on failure.

Snippets are Tempest's saved shell commands — paste a command once, give it a name, and re-run it on any host with a click. Scheduled runs turn snippets into cron jobs that fire on the hosts you choose, with notifications routed to your phone via Tempest Push when a run fails.

It's the missing layer between "I keep retyping the same journalctl -u …" and "I don't want to set up Ansible just for three commands."

Save a snippet

1. Open the Snippets panel.

2. Click New Snippet.

3. Paste your command (multi-line is fine — bash heredocs, pipelines, etc.).

4. Give it a name and optionally a description.

5. Save.

Snippets sync across your devices via your encrypted vault, just like hosts.

Run a snippet

• In any SSH tab, open the snippet panel and pick one — Tempest sends it through the channel

• Or target multiple hosts at once: pick the snippet, select hosts from your list, run. Each host gets its own output panel.

Schedule a snippet

1. Open a snippet → Schedule tab.

2. Set the cron expression (UI helper for common patterns: every hour, every day at 3 AM, etc.).

3. Pick targets: one host, a tag-matched group, or all hosts.

4. Optional: enable Notify on failure → exit code ≠ 0 triggers a Tempest Push to your phone.

5. Save.

The schedule runs in the Tempest backend (Electron main process / standalone server), not in the renderer. So:

• Your laptop can be asleep and the run still happens — as long as the Tempest backend is up.

• On the standalone Tempest server, schedules survive even if no client is connected (perfect for lightweight ops automation).

Run history

Each scheduled run records:

• Start / end timestamp

• Exit code

• Stdout / stderr captured (configurable size limit)

• Per-target status when running fan-out

Browse history in Snippets → History with filters by snippet, host, and status.

When to use snippets vs. an actual config-management tool

Use Snippets when	Use Ansible / Puppet / Salt when
1–10 hosts	Hundreds of hosts
Operational commands ("show me the disk usage", "restart this service")	Declarative state ("nginx must be installed")
You want one-shot fan-out from your laptop	You want a CI pipeline triggering converged state
Quick fix for a specific incident	Reproducible infrastructure

The two complement each other — snippets handle ad-hoc operational tasks, real config-management tools handle long-lived state.

Pro feature

Scheduled runs are part of Tempest Pro. Saving and one-off running of snippets is free.

See also

• Tempest Push Notifications — how failure alerts reach your phone

• Tempest AI Assistant — generate snippet content from a natural-language description