tailscale-mosh-recover

tailscale-mosh-recover is a skill for Claude Code from flonat/flonat-research. It costs 69 tokens per session (3,976 once invoked), scanned D, original, MIT.

A troubleshooting workflow for restoring remote access to a headless Mac mini when Tailscale, mosh, name resolution, or relay connections fail. Tailscale is a private networking tool, and mosh is a remote terminal connection method.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps diagnose and recover SSH-like terminal access and remote desktop access to a Mac mini after networking or Tailscale changes.
Why use it?
A Tailscale service failure can change the machine's network address and leave existing mosh sessions unreachable. The workflow connects these symptoms and guides recovery.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool; mentions Claude Code.

Good fit It helps diagnose and recover SSH-like terminal access and remote desktop access to a Mac mini after networking or Tailscale changes.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/flonat/flonat-research/tailscale-mosh-recover
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add flonat/flonat-research --skill tailscale-mosh-recover
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/flonat/flonat-research

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for tailscale-mosh-recover

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/flonat/flonat-research/tailscale-mosh-recover/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/flonat/flonat-research/tailscale-mosh-recover)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/flonat/flonat-research/tailscale-mosh-recover"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/flonat/flonat-research/tailscale-mosh-recover/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for tailscale-mosh-recover

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/flonat/flonat-research/tailscale-mosh-recover"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/flonat/flonat-research/tailscale-mosh-recover.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 69 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,976 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan D 2 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00069 $0.03976
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.01988
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00795
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00398

Measured 8d ago against content hash aa111c1a5d36, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade D, and why

tailscale-mosh-recover scanned grade D with 2 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 8d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/tailscale

Recursive force deletehighDestructive command

rm -rf with a variable or a broad path is one typo away from removing the wrong tree.

sudo rm -rf /Applications/Tailscale.app
skills/tailscale-mosh-recover/SKILL.md · 267 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 267 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Tailscale + Mosh Recovery (Headless Mac mini)

Problem

After a Tailscale update or daemon restart on a headless Mac mini, mosh sessions break. Common symptoms (any combination):

  • tailscale status returns: failed to connect to local Tailscale service; is Tailscale running?
  • mosh <host> returns: could not get canonical name for <host>: nodename nor servname provided, or not known, then Connection closed by UNKNOWN port 65535, then Did not find remote IP address (is SSH ProxyCommand disabled?).
  • Tailscale GUI app CLI returns: Tailscale.CLIError error 1.
  • which tailscale reports a path that does not actually exist on disk.
  • tailscale up registers the machine as <hostname>-1 (a duplicate of the original node — IP changed).

The two underlying problems are causally linked: Tailscale daemon trouble forces a re-auth → new Tailscale IP → existing mosh-server processes are bound to the old IP and become unreachable.

Context / Triggers

Sign Likely cause
Mac mini's tailscale status says daemon not running GUI app daemon needs a logged-in user session — won't run headless
which tailscale returns a path that ls says doesn't exist Shell PATH cache + missing symlink (often the Homebrew symlink dropped during update)
Two Tailscale installs: GUI app at /Applications/Tailscale.app AND Homebrew Cellar Dual install — one's daemon is fighting for the socket
mosh fails only after a working tailscale up re-registration Stale mosh-server processes bound to the prior Tailscale IP
Old hostname offline + new hostname <name>-1 in admin console Re-auth created a new node; old one is stale

Solution

Work in this order: Layer 1 (Tailscale daemon) then Layer 2 (mosh cleanup). If only mosh is broken and tailscale status is healthy, skip Layer 1.

Layer 1: Tailscale daemon health (headless Mac mini)

The headless constraint: the standalone Tailscale.app GUI bundle's daemon needs an active user session. On a headless Mac mini (no monitor, no auto-login), the GUI daemon never starts. The right setup for headless is Homebrew's tailscale package run as a launchd service — it's a system service that survives reboots without any logged-in user.

Read the full file on GitHub · 267 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 8d ago First seen · 267 lines · 69 tokens per session scan D aa111c1a5d36

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tailscale-mosh-recover is a skill published in the GitHub repository flonat/flonat-research (133 stars, last pushed 17d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 69 tokens to every session and 3,976 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it D with 2 findings (asks for root, recursive force delete). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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