How to edit Home Assistant config from locally installed Visual Studio Code

i have ssh to my pi setup (it runs home assistant os), in terminal I can simply ssh ha.local and everything is configured in my ssh.config

after installing the remote ssh in visual studio on my Mac and choosing connect to remote, ha.local automatically shows up. however when trying to connect, I get an error:

[11:30:58.276] stderr> Authenticated to ha.local ([fe80::....%en0]:22222) using "publickey".
[11:30:58.305] > ready: 99935ea33c3d
[11:30:58.316] > Linux 6.1.21-v8 #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Apr 25 14:21:31 UTC 2023
[11:30:58.316] Platform: linux
[11:30:58.321] > /bin/sh
[11:30:58.321] Shell: sh
[11:30:58.321] Creating bash subshell inside "sh"
[11:30:58.377] > bash version:
[11:30:58.429] > bash version:
[11:30:58.436] stderr> bash: syntax error: unexpected "(" (expecting "then")

and then the connection fails

[11:30:58.450] > local-server-1> ssh child died, shutting down
...
[11:30:58.452] Failed to parse remote port from server output
[11:30:58.454] Resolver error: Error: 
	at m.Create 
	at t.handleInstallOutput
	at Object.e [as tryInstallWithLocalServer] 

I tried some of the advice listed at VS Code Remote SSH Connection not working - Stack Overflow

however I feel the the homeassistant OS might be a problem. Any ideas?