Getting started

A practical walkthrough — from a fresh Tailscale account to sharing several real dev servers through one URL.

1. Set up Tailscale (one-time)


tailscale up                      # sign up / log in

Enable HTTPS certificates and, for public sharing, the funnel node attribute. Then verify:


npx tailscale-proxy doctor

2. Start some dev servers

These runtimes are discovered by default: node, bun, deno, python, ruby, php, go, java, dotnet, elixir, perl, and docker-published ports. Run each from its project folder — that becomes the URL path.


# JavaScript / TypeScript
cd ~/sites/portfolio && npx serve -l 3000
cd ~/sites/docs      && npx http-server -p 3001
cd ~/apps/web        && npx next dev -p 4000
cd ~/apps/api        && bun run dev
 
# Python (interpreter or uvicorn/gunicorn)
cd ~/apps/fastapi    && uvicorn main:app --port 3010
 
# PHP / Ruby / Go / Docker
cd ~/apps/legacy     && php -S 127.0.0.1:3004
cd ~/apps/rb         && ruby -run -e httpd . -p 3005
cd ~/apps/gosrv      && go run .
docker run -p 3030:80 nginx


tsp                  # public Funnel (default)
tsp --private        # tailnet-only Serve


Services:
  https://bigfoot.tail-scale.ts.net/portfolio/  →  127.0.0.1:3000
  https://bigfoot.tail-scale.ts.net/web/        →  127.0.0.1:4000
  https://bigfoot.tail-scale.ts.net/api/        →  127.0.0.1:4100

4. Save your preferences


tsp configure --ports 3000-9000 --runtimes node,bun,python
tsp                  # now a bare `tsp` uses the saved config

Compiled binaries (a built Go or Rust server) have arbitrary process names, so they show up only under --all. go run / cargo dev workflows are detected.

A real multi-service setup

Four services, each in its own folder under ~/work/help-ai:


cd ~/work/help-ai/services/agent     && bun run dev    # :3087
cd ~/work/help-ai/services/crawlee   && bun run dev    # :3120
cd ~/work/help-ai/services/workspace && bun run dev    # :3122
cd ~/work/help-ai/apps/web           && npm run dev    # :4501
tsp


  https://bigfoot.tail-scale.ts.net/agent/      →  127.0.0.1:3087
  https://bigfoot.tail-scale.ts.net/crawlee/    →  127.0.0.1:3120
  https://bigfoot.tail-scale.ts.net/workspace/  →  127.0.0.1:3122
  https://bigfoot.tail-scale.ts.net/web/        →  127.0.0.1:4501

Restart a server and tsp picks up the new process automatically. If a project folder runs more than one server, the lowest-port one is the main /<slug>/ and the others get a -<port> suffix — all stay reachable, and tsp prints the map.