Other ways to reach the daemon: Tailscale and ngrok

The daemon has no authentication. No login, no API key, no token — every request it receives is honored. POST /api/panes/{id}/send types characters into a real terminal on your machine, and GET /api/panes/{id}/snapshots/{snap_id} hands over the scrollback.

It binds 127.0.0.1:18030, so today the boundary is your machine: anyone who can reach that port can control your terminal — which means any other user account on the box, and any process you run, including a compromised dependency or a browser page that can reach localhost. That is the baseline before you expose anything.

Run tmux-rc only on a single-user machine. A loopback bind is not a permission check: on a shared host, every other account can reach 127.0.0.1:18030 and type into your terminals. There is no per-user isolation to fall back on, so a multi-user box is out of scope for this project as it stands.

Putting the daemon on a network moves that boundary outward, so whatever you put in front of it is the entire access-control system. The question is not “how do I get a URL for my phone”, it is “who is allowed to type into my shell”.

This page is a pointer, not a runbook: each vendor’s own docs are the current truth, and neither tool below is verified against this host. If you need a public hostname with a real login in front of it, follow the Cloudflare Tunnel + Access runbook — it is verified end to end, and it puts an Access policy in front of the hostname before the tunnel starts.

Tailscale — prefer this

tailscale serve publishes the daemon to your tailnet only. There is no public listener for a scanner to find, no password to leak, and no browser session to steal; the credential is a device enrollment, and your phone already runs the Tailscale app. For a personal phone dashboard over an unauthenticated keystroke-injection API, that is the smallest surface that still works, and it is the option to reach for first.

Setup is a few minutes with Tailscale’s own docs for serve . Leave the daemon on loopback (do not set TMUXRC_HOST=0.0.0.0) so that even an enrolled device cannot sidestep Serve by hitting port 18030 directly. If the daemon answers 400 Host is not allowed, Serve forwarded the tailnet name as Host: put it in TMUXRC_ALLOWED_HOSTS and its https:// origin in TMUXRC_ALLOWED_ORIGINS (see Deploying ).

Do not use tailscale funnel for this daemon. Funnel publishes to the open internet and has no authentication layer of its own — Tailscale’s docs draw the line exactly here: Serve forwards identity headers, while “Funnel traffic, which is publicly available, does not include identity headers” (Funnel docs ). There is no “require login” toggle in front of it. tailscale funnel 18030 publishes keystroke injection into your terminals to anyone who finds the hostname — and Funnel hostnames are not secret; they appear in Certificate Transparency logs as soon as the certificate is issued.

Tailscale needs nothing from deploy/systemd/tmux-rc-tunnel.service: tailscaled is already a supervised service and the serve mapping lives in its state. Leave ~/.config/tmux-rc/tunnel.env absent and the unit stays cleanly inactive.

ngrok — a public hostname, so authentication is mandatory

ngrok gives you a public URL, which puts it in the same risk category as a Cloudflare Tunnel: the endpoint is reachable by anyone who finds it, so the edge policy is the only thing standing between the internet and your shell. Authentication is available, and on the free tier — ngrok’s Traffic Policy can enforce OAuth/OIDC or basic auth at the edge. Configure it in the same breath as the endpoint, never “for now” without it, and remember that a login action proves someone authenticated, not that it was you: pair it with an explicit email allowlist.

Two practical caveats for this app specifically. Free endpoints serve a browser interstitial before your app loads, which an installed PWA and its fetch/WebSocket calls cannot dismiss the documented way. And free-tier URL churn breaks a bookmarked PWA unless you claim your account’s static domain. Check ngrok’s docs and pricing for the current limits.

Need a public hostname with a real login?

Cloudflare Tunnel + Access is the option this repo has actually verified end to end — see the runbook . The one thing to carry over even if you follow Cloudflare’s docs instead: create the Access policy before you start the tunnel. The moment cloudflared connects, the hostname serves the daemon to anyone who finds it, and there is no grace period.