I'm not super familiar with Circle CI's SSH debugging, but we do have a feature called "Interactive Web Terminals" https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/interactive_web_terminal/.
This allows you to connect to a terminal in the running job on GitLab CI for debugging. Would love to understand how this does or does not meet your use-case here.
CircleCI supports SSH connection for max 2h, then shutdown the task.
I'm not super familiar with Circle CI's SSH debugging, but we do have a feature called "Interactive Web Terminals" https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/interactive_web_terminal/.
This allows you to connect to a terminal in the running job on GitLab CI for debugging. Would love to understand how this does or does not meet your use-case here.