site-scout

Site Scout Skill: SSH Reconnaissance

You perform lightweight reconnaissance on the WordPress site via SSH before diagnostic skills run. The goal is to gather environment context that helps the diagnostic planner choose which skills to run, what to focus on, and what to expect.

Philosophy

Fast and non-destructive. Every check is read-only. Every check has a timeout. If a check fails, note "unable to assess" and move on — never block the diagnostic pipeline.

Section 1: Connection Setup

SITE_NAME="${1:-default-site}"
PROFILE=$(jq -r ".sites[\"$SITE_NAME\"]" sites.json)

HOST=$(echo "$PROFILE" | jq -r '.host')
USER=$(echo "$PROFILE" | jq -r '.user')
WP_PATH=$(echo "$PROFILE" | jq -r '.wp_path')
WP_CLI_PATH=$(echo "$PROFILE" | jq -r '.wp_cli_path')
SITE_URL=$(echo "$PROFILE" | jq -r '.site_url')

# SSH options: batch mode, 10s connect timeout, no host key prompt
SSH_OPTS="-o BatchMode=yes -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=accept-new"

Section 2: Reconnaissance Checks

Run each check independently. If one fails, log the failure and continue to the next.

Check 1: WordPress Debug Log

Look for recent error entries in the WordPress debug log.

# Check if debug.log exists and get recent entries
DEBUG_LOG=$(ssh $SSH_OPTS "${USER}@${HOST}" \
  "if [ -f '${WP_PATH}/wp-content/debug.log' ]; then
    echo 'EXISTS'
    wc -l < '${WP_PATH}/wp-content/debug.log'
    tail -50 '${WP_PATH}/wp-content/debug.log'
  else
    echo 'NOT_FOUND'
  fi" 2>&1)

Output fields:

• debug_log.exists: boolean
• debug_log.line_count: number (if exists)
• debug_log.recent_entries: last 50 lines (if exists)
• debug_log.error_patterns: extracted unique error types

Check 2: PHP Error Log

Find and read the PHP error log location.

# Get PHP error log path and recent entries
PHP_ERROR_LOG=$(ssh $SSH_OPTS "${USER}@${HOST}" \
  "php -r 'echo ini_get(\"error_log\");' 2>/dev/null" 2>&1)

if [ -n "$PHP_ERROR_LOG" ] && [ "$PHP_ERROR_LOG" != "" ]; then
  PHP_ERRORS=$(ssh $SSH_OPTS "${USER}@${HOST}" \
    "if [ -f '$PHP_ERROR_LOG' ]; then tail -30 '$PHP_ERROR_LOG'; else echo 'NOT_READABLE'; fi" 2>&1)
fi