Ssh – Upload file over ssh and execute command on the remote machine

The most obvious way to run a command remotely is to specify it on the ssh command line. The ssh command is always interpreted by the remote user's shell.

ssh bob@example.com '. ~/.profile; command_that_needs_environment_variables'
ssh -t bob@example.com '. ~/.profile; exec zsh'

Shared accounts are generally a bad idea; if at all possible, get separate accounts for every user. If you're stuck with a shared account, you can make an alias:

ssh -t shared-account@example.com 'HOME=~/bob; . ~/.profile; exec zsh'

If you use public key authentication (again, recommended), you can define per-key commands in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. See this answer for more explanations. Edit the line for your key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server (all on one line):

command="HOME=$HOME/bob;
     if [ -n \"$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND\" ]; then
       eval \"$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND\";
     else exec \"$SHELL\"; fi" ssh-rsa AAAA…== bob@some.where

As the name indicates, LocalCommand runs a command on the local (client) machine, not on the remote (server) machine. The command that runs on the server is the argument(s) that you pass to ssh after the options and the host name.

By default, a terminal is not created when you pass a command, so pass the -t option to create one. Instead of ssh yourserver, run

ssh -t yourserver exec sudo -iu project_user