A first tailnet pairing with no auth key detours through a Tailscale browser
login that can take minutes. The intro screen — the only UI an unpaired phone
has — showed just "Connecting to your Mac…" for that whole window, and if
the user closed Safari there was no way back to the login page (the Settings
tab with the login link only exists once paired). The intro's pairing status
now explains the approval step and links to the login page whenever the
embedded node is waiting on one.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <[email protected]>
Tailscale (Tailnet) sync transport: transport picker in Settings ▸ Remote,
interactive browser login, and LAN↔tailnet fallback.
Semantic merge fixes (both sides compiled alone but not together):
- handleTransportFailure (dev's friendly transport errors) now checks
connectivity.isLive — .connected gained a transport payload on the branch —
and stays silent while the branch's connect chain still has candidates to
try, so a LAN probe failing over to the tailnet doesn't flash a red error.
- Chain-exhaustion paths keep a friendlier transport-level failure message
when onFailed already surfaced one instead of clobbering it with the
generic handshake error.
Verified on the merge: swift build + 37 sync/transport/store tests green
(incl. dev's FilePairedDeviceStore + the now-fixed contract tests), iOS
simulator build green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <[email protected]>
Browser login — the auth key is now optional on both platforms. When the
embedded node starts with no key, TailnetNode asks the backend (LocalAPI
backendStatus — IPN state, deliberately not filesystem heuristics: tsnet
writes logs and a machine key on every start, registered or not) whether a
login is needed, triggers login-interactive, surfaces the auth URL through a
new statusStream()/.needsLogin, and waits for Running (4-minute deadline,
generation-fenced against stop/restart). The Mac auto-opens the login page
from Settings ▸ Remote and shows a re-open button; the iPhone auto-opens only
during user-initiated pairing (a background reconnect that suddenly needs a
login must not eject the user to Safari — Settings ▸ Tailscale carries the
link). The remote-access toggle now reflects the in-flight start instead of
snapping off for the whole login window, and toggling off mid-start is
honored at both commit points (before and after host.start).
LAN↔tailnet fallback — picking Tailnet now keeps LAN on too: the host runs
both listeners under a new CompositeSyncListener (merged accept stream; one
child ending doesn't end the rest) and the pairing QR carries both hints.
The phone builds an ordered candidate chain — LAN first (QR hint or Bonjour),
tailnet second — and walks it on pair and reconnect, so a phone that leaves
the Mac's Wi‑Fi rolls over to the tailnet and rolls back when it returns.
A per-channel 4s connect guard (readiness-checking, bound to exactly its
channel) keeps a stale LAN hint from hanging the chain; a stale-client guard
in consume() keeps a replaced client's tail events from advancing it; chain
exhaustion during pairing lands in a terminal failure instead of spinning on
"Connecting…"; routine pre-fallback handshake errors no longer flash the red
error bubble. "Connected · LAN / Tailnet" shows whichever transport won.
Multi-agent review: 11 confirmed findings (incl. the login gate being dead
code via tsnet's eager state-dir writes, and two connect-timeout races), all
fixed and re-verified. Suite green (24 sync-related tests incl. 3 new
CompositeSyncListener tests); macOS + iOS builds clean.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <[email protected]>
Settings ▸ Remote gains a "Connect via" picker — LAN (default), Tailscale
(tailnet), or Relay (disabled, coming soon). On Tailnet, both devices run an
embedded tsnet node via TailscaleKit (tailscale/libtailscale) and sync frames
flow over the user's tailnet, so the phone can connect from anywhere the
tailnet reaches; Noise E2EE runs above the transport unchanged.
- NucleicTailnet (new target, macOS + iOS): TailnetNode wraps TailscaleKit's
node lifecycle (auth-key login, generation-fenced start/stop since up() is
un-cancellable) and drops to the framework's public C API for the data path
— tailscale_dial/listen/accept hand back full-duplex socketpair fds, wrapped
by FDFrameChannel (DispatchIO) into the shared FrameChannel seam. The Swift
wrapper's one-way connection actors can't carry a bidirectional stream.
- Host: TailnetListener adopts SyncListener; startSyncServer is single-flight
and honors toggle-off/picker changes at the commit point; pairing QRs carry
transport + tailnet IP/port hints (PairingPayload additive optional fields,
forward/backward compatible over CBOR).
- iPhone: pair/reconnect dial over whichever transport the pairing recorded;
Settings gains a Tailscale auth-key field (Keychain, committed on editing
end); connectivity chip shows "Connected · Tailnet".
- TailscaleKit has no SwiftPM distribution: scripts/build-tailscalekit.sh
builds a pinned libtailscale commit into an untracked local xcframework;
Package.swift links it only when present (everything builds without it, the
picker then reports Tailscale support as not built in), and the script
clears SwiftPM's content-keyed manifest cache so the toggle is picked up.
- iOS floor 17.0 → 18.1 (TailscaleKit requires the iOS 18 Swift runtime);
package-app.sh embeds the framework in the .app like Sparkle.
703-test suite: no new failures (the 7 fake-claude/fake-grok staging issues
reproduce identically on an untouched checkout — pre-existing, tracked
separately). New coverage: FDFrameChannel over socketpairs, pairing-payload
version-skew both directions, transport-setting resolution.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <[email protected]>
abkslmandClaude Fable 5