The subtle magic of tsnet

In a presentation at Tailscale Up, Xe Iaso, the Archmage of Infrastructure at Tailscale, explored the innovative uses of tsnet, a library that enables embedding Tailscale's networking capabilities directly into Go programs. Xe highlighted how tsnet simplifies managing internal services by bundling IP addresses, DNS names, HTTPS certificates, and access controls, thereby reducing the complexity often associated with networking setups. The talk detailed several use cases, including XeDN, a custom-built CDN using tsnet, and Robocadey2, a bot that integrates Stable Diffusion for image generation. Xe also showcased tclip, a self-hosted pastebin leveraging Tailscale's identity-aware networking, and discussed the development of libtailscale, which seeks to extend tsnet's capabilities to applications written in non-Go languages. Throughout the talk, the emphasis was on how tsnet removes the hassle of traditional networking, allowing developers to focus more on their core applications while maintaining secure and efficient connectivity.