This seems like pretty simple code. Could we not roll this into the official ssh client as a patch, but instead of port forwarding, use the existing keep-alive

This seems like pretty simple code. Could we not roll this into the official ssh client as a patch, but instead of port forwarding, use the existing keep-alive code and ssh signaling channel to check the connection and restart the session? Not only would this be cleaner (no need for wrappers), but we could use it on servers where port forwarding is disabled.