This is Outer Loop.

Outer Loop is a specialized web browser that uses SSH to connect to web apps running on private servers. It uses a custom SSH port forwarding engine that is designed to work well on laptops. You can close your laptop lid, open it later, and everything will still be connected.

This is useful for:

• Scientific computing (Jupyter, Tensorboard, MLFlow, RStudio Server, etc.)
• Server / database administration (phpMyAdmin, Kubernetes Dashboard, etc.)
• Smart home management (Home Assistant)

Outer Loop's long-term product direction: keep making it more fun to use apps like these.

Example

Here is Outer Loop showing a Jupyter Python notebook and a Tensorboard LLM training visualization.

Apps like Jupyter and Tensorboard are not typically visible to standard web browsers if they're running on remote servers, because it would be terribly unsafe to let the whole internet touch this app. Instead, they run on a local port on the server, which your computer can't access directly.

Classically, to get access to these, you had to open a new terminal and run:

    ssh -L 24601:localhost:8889 mrcslws@lambda4.mycompany.com &
    ssh -L 24602:localhost:6006 mrcslws@lambda4.mycompany.com &

In Outer Loop, each browser window is connected to a remote server. It can freely access remote ports as if they're on your own machine. And, in addition to providing this better UI, the web view's connection to the server is much more reliable in Outer Loop than over the classic "ssh -L". Outer Loop's custom SSH engine embraces the transient nature of SSH sessions, rather than assuming that they are stable, which makes everything seamless, even after you close your laptop and reopen it later.

Of course, you don't have to use the built-in web view. If you really just want a reliable standalone port forwarder for your existing browser, Outer Loop supports that:

Hope you like it! And feel free to say hello.