That's definitely do-able, but I didn't want to do that because it adds a level of indirection. When I put my relevant commands in a script, I have to start thi

That's definitely do-able, but I didn't want to do that because it adds a level of indirection. When I put my relevant commands in a script, I have to start thinking about what directory it's in and how that affects its operations. I also have to think about how to handle errors for failures of the various commands, and I can only handle those errors on the target machine. If I'd doing expect and a command has an error, I can handle it on my local machine which might have more info (maybe I can set it up to switch to a backup machine or something). Are these solvable problems? Sure, for me it's a matter of taste. Also, your comment would read almost identically and perhaps even better without the first three words.