Tailscale Without Tailscale, By Tailscale - TailscaleUp 2026

Tailscale engineers introduced Tailcat, an open-source library and CLI tool that provides Tailscale's data plane capabilities—including WireGuard encryption, NAT traversal, and a Gvisor TCP stack—without requiring the Tailscale control plane. The project allows users to establish direct or relayed connections between arbitrary machines and has been used to build lightweight networking features like a direct Minecraft LAN connection without a Tailscale client. Open article →