tailscale/tailcat
like netcat, but over Tailscale's data plane, without Tailscale's control plane
From the publisher
README & documentation
Source previewRead the project’s overview, installation instructions and usage examples. The original README is the source of truth.
"Tailscale without Tailscale, by Tailscale" Tailcat is a remix of Tailscale open source pieces to act like netcat, but over Tailscale's data plane, without Tailscale's control plane. Tailscale's data plane (magicsock, internally) gives you point-to-point WireGuard®-encrypted tunnels between two machines with DERP as the NAT-hole-punching communication side channel and the ultimate relay-of-last-resort if NAT traversal fails. Instead of using the Tailscale control plane, all tailcat connection metadata is exchanged out of band, however you want. The tailcat CLI (in cmd/tailcat) is built on the tailcat Go library (importable as github.com/tailscale/tailcat). Whether you use tailcat as a CLI tool or library, one side runs a tailcat server (listener) and gets back a short tailcat address. The other side passes that tailcat address to tailcat's client side to connect. All traffic between the two is encrypted end-to-end with WireGuard. The initial connection bootstraps through a DERP server (see below), and then magicsock…
Read the full README ↗ · Preview checked 2026-11-13T13:26:29.572Z
Inside the original README — Document outline
- Tailcat
- Install
- Usage
- Pipe stdin/stdout between two machines
- Expose local ports through the tunnel
- Forward local ports to a tailcat server
- Open a browser to a tailcat server
- Public-key-authenticated SSH server
- Auth-free SSH server
- Run a command per connection
- Send and receive files
- Measure throughput and latency
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What this repository does
like netcat, but over Tailscale's data plane, without Tailscale's control plane
Repository facts
- Owner
- tailscale
- Primary language
- Go
- Stars
- 9,687
- Forks
- 443
- Open issues + pull requests
- 41
- License
- BSD-3-Clause
- Archived
- No
- Default branch
- main
- Created
- 2024-10-29T17:21:12.000Z
- Last push
- 2026-11-05T15:10:23.000Z
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