Tailscale Releases Tailcat: The Data Plane Without the Control Plane

Tailcat: Tailscale Without Tailscale, by Tailscale

Tailscale has released tailcat, an open-source Go package and CLI that lets you use Tailscale's data plane—WireGuard encryption, NAT traversal, and DERP relays—without the control plane, accounts, or IP addresses. It works like netcat but over Tailscale's magicsock, enabling direct peer-to-peer connections with DERP fallback. Tailcat is ideal for quick file transfers, port forwarding, and AI agent experiments, and it can be used with your own DERP server to avoid rate limits.