tailscale-cli

A command-line assistant for Tailscale, a VPN that connects devices over a private network. It covers connections, device status, file sharing, private service exposure, and related settings.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to connect or disconnect devices, inspect network status, use Taildrop file sharing, expose services with Tailscale Serve or Funnel, and manage other Tailscale settings.
Why use it?
It provides the correct terminal commands for managing Tailscale across supported operating systems and installation types.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/lyhcode/agent-skills/tailscale-cli
Any agent
npx skills add lyhcode/agent-skills --skill tailscale-cli
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lyhcode/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 84 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,119 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00084 $0.02119
Opus 5 $0.00042 $0.01059
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00424
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00212

Measured yesterday against content hash 20cfb346663a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tailscale-cli scanned grade A with 0 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 yesterday.

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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/tailscale-cli/SKILL.md · 281 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 281 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Tailscale CLI Assistant

Help users manage Tailscale VPN using the tailscale CLI.

Prerequisites

  • Tailscale installed on the device
  • Verify setup: tailscale status

CLI Path by Platform

IMPORTANT: The CLI path differs by platform and installation method.

macOS (App Store)

The CLI is bundled inside the app. Use the full path or create an alias:

# Direct execution
/Applications/Tailscale.app/Contents/MacOS/Tailscale <command>

# Recommended: add alias to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc
alias tailscale="/Applications/Tailscale.app/Contents/MacOS/Tailscale"

macOS (Standalone variant)

Install CLI integration from the client: Settings > CLI integration > Install Now. This installs a launcher to /usr/local/bin/tailscale.

Linux / Windows

The tailscale binary is in $PATH by default:

tailscale <command>

Force CLI mode (macOS)

If the app intercepts the command, set:

export TAILSCALE_BE_CLI=1

Core Commands

Connect & Authenticate

tailscale up                              # Connect to Tailscale
tailscale up --auth-key=<key>             # Auto-authenticate with auth key
tailscale up --force-reauth               # Force re-authentication
tailscale down                            # Disconnect
tailscale login                           # Log in (add device to tailnet)
tailscale logout                          # Log out (expire session)
tailscale switch <account>                # Switch account (fast user switching)
tailscale switch --list                   # List available accounts

Status & Info

tailscale status                          # Show connected devices
tailscale status --json                   # JSON output (detailed)
tailscale status --json | jq '.Peer[] | {Name: .HostName, IP: .TailscaleIPs[0]}'
tailscale ip                              # Show this device's Tailscale IPs
tailscale ip -4                           # IPv4 only (100.x.y.z)
tailscale ip -6                           # IPv6 only
tailscale ip <hostname>                   # Get IP of another device
tailscale whois <ip>                      # Look up device/user by IP
tailscale whois --json <ip>               # JSON output
tailscale version                         # Print version
tailscale netcheck                        # Network connectivity report

Read the full file on GitHub · 281 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. yesterday First seen · 281 lines · 84 tokens per session scan A 20cfb346663a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tailscale-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository lyhcode/agent-skills (2 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 2,119 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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