spences10 Operating Tailscale Agent Hosts
Turn an existing Linux machine into a private, persistent coding-agent worker without exposing SSH or development ports to the public internet.
Core Rules
- Treat Tailscale as the private network path; still configure a service to accept SSH, desktop, or HTTP traffic.
- Prefer Tailscale SSH and narrowly scoped access rules over public SSH or router port forwarding.
- Keep privileged operations and OAuth approval user-driven; never request passwords or expose tokens in logs.
- Verify unattended boot instead of assuming it: networking, Tailscale, sleep policy, encrypted-disk prompts, and services are separate concerns.
- Use tmux for persistence and git worktrees for concurrent mutating agents.
- Bind dev servers to localhost and expose them with Tailscale Serve when possible.
- Transfer configuration selectively; exclude credentials, histories, caches, databases, host keys, and machine-specific trust records by default.
Workflow
- Run
scripts/readiness-check.shon the proposed host. - Follow setup.md to establish unattended private access.
- Follow agent-operations.md for tmux, worktrees, authentication, and delivery.
- Use troubleshooting.md when access only works after login, OAuth fails, or remote services are unreachable.
Security Boundary
Disabling Tailscale SSH check mode removes periodic browser re-authentication; it does not remove tailnet identity or encryption. Only use an accept rule when source identity, destination device, and destination user are narrowly restricted. Never broaden the default self/root rule merely for convenience.