ssh into RPi problems

[dave5851]

Add-on: Advanced SSH & Web Terminal
A supercharged SSH & Web Terminal access to your Home Assistant instance

Add-on version: 22.0.3
You are running the latest version of this add-on.
System: Home Assistant OS 16.3 (aarch64 / raspberrypi4-64)
Home Assistant Core: 2025.12.5
Home Assistant Supervisor: 2025.12.3

for 2 months I have been trying to ssh consistently into Raspberry Pi from my Linux laptop Mint running. Nothing but problems.. Terrible time getting authorized keys set up. I was finally able to access the Pi. I want to be able to read and write to files on the Pi, but when I try, thee Pi keeps making new folders and sub folders and links (the list has gotten HUGE!!) (I read that HA does this to protect it's files)

A command from the Mint terminal might work one day, but fail the next with "permission denied" and/or "no such folder or file" errors. I spent a lot of time going over SSH documentation and searching the web for answers. I have tried both SSH integrations. I'm wondering if I should now trash the SSH integration and start anew, but I'm worried that will affect the file structure on the Pi and wreck my HA account. Thanks for any input