tsidp - Tailscale OpenID Connect (OIDC) Identity Provider

Caution

This is an experimental update of tsidp. It is under active development and may experience breaking changes.

tsidp is an OIDC / OAuth Identity Provider (IdP) server that integrates with your Tailscale network. It allows you to use Tailscale identities for authentication into applications that support OpenID Connect as well as authenticated MCP client / server connections.

Prerequisites

• A Tailscale network (tailnet) with MagicDNS and HTTPS enabled
• A Tailscale authentication key from your tailnet
• (Recommended) Docker installed on your system
• Ability to set an Application capability grant

Running tsidp

(Recommended) Using the pre-built image

Docker images are automatically published at https://ghcr.io/tailscale/tsidp when releases are tagged.

Tip

Replace YOUR_TAILSCALE_AUTHKEY with your Tailscale authentication key in the following commands:

Use an existing auth key or create a new auth key in the Keys page of the Tailscale admin console. Ensure you select an existing tag or create a new one.

Here is an example docker compose YAML file for tsidp:

services:
  tsidp:
    container_name: tsidp
    image: ghcr.io/tailscale/tsidp:latest
    volumes:
      - tsidp-data:/data
    environment:
      - TAILSCALE_USE_WIP_CODE=1 # tsidp is experimental - needed while version <1.0.0
      - TS_STATE_DIR=/data # store persistent tsnet and tsidp state
      - TS_HOSTNAME=idp # Hostname on tailnet (becomes idp.your-tailnet.ts.net)
      - TSIDP_ENABLE_STS=1 # Enable OAuth token exchange
      # Optional: Tailscale auth key for automatic node registration
      # - TS_AUTHKEY=tskey-auth-xxxxx
volumes:
  tsidp-data:

Paste the YAML snippet above into a file named compose.yaml. Once the compose file has been edited to your satisfaction, start tsidp by issuing docker compose up -d. Monitor the result with docker compose logs -f.

Once tsidp has started, visit https://idp.yourtailnet.ts.net in a browser to confirm the service is running.

Note

If you're running tsidp for the first time it may take a few minutes for the TLS certificate to generate. You may not be able to access the service until the certificate is ready.

[!NOTE] Using OAuth Client Secrets As an alternative to traditional auth keys, you can use OAuth client secrets for authentication by passing them through TS_AUTHKEY.

When using OAuth client secrets:

• Pass the OAuth client secret through TS_AUTHKEY (same as regular auth keys)
• Specify advertise tags using TS_ADVERTISE_TAGS
• The OAuth client secret must start with tskey-client-
• The tags must be properly configured in your Tailscale ACL policy

Other Ways to Build and Run

Building your own container

$ make docker-image

Using Go directly

If you'd like to build tsidp and / or run it directly you can do the following:

# Clone the Tailscale repository
$ git clone https://github.com/tailscale/tsidp.git
$ cd tsidp

# run with default values for flags
$ TAILSCALE_USE_WIP_CODE=1 TS_AUTHKEY={YOUR_TAILSCALE_AUTHKEY} TSNET_FORCE_LOGIN=1 go run .

Setting an Application Capability Grant

Important

Access to the admin UI and dynamic client registration endpoints are denied by default.

Warning

tsidp's application capability schema are still in development and may change at anytime.

• Set an Application capability to grant access to the admin UI and DCR endpoints.
• Configure grants in the Access controls page of the Tailscale admin console.
• App capability grants are per request and updated immediately. No need to restart tsidp.

Example

"grants": [
  {
    // Very permissive and suitable only for testing.
    "src": ["*"],
    "dst": ["*"],

    // Example of a grant for tsidp:
    "app": {
      "tailscale.com/cap/tsidp": [
        {
          // allow access to UI
          "allow_admin_ui": true,

          // allow dynamic client registration
          "allow_dcr": true,

          // Secure Token Service (STS) controls
          "users":     ["*"],
          "resources": ["*"],

          // extraClaims are included in the id_token
          // recommend: keep this small and simple
          "extraClaims": {
            "bools": true,
            "strings": "Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006",
            "numbers": 180,
            "array1": [1,2,3],
            "array2": ["one", "two", "three"]
          },

          // include extraClaims data in /userinfo response
          "includeInUserInfo": true,
        },
      ],
    },
  },
],

tsidp Configuration Options

The tsidp-server is configured by several command-line flags:

Flag	Description	Default
-dir <path>	Directory path to save tsnet and tsidp state. Recommend to be set.	""
-hostname <hostname>	hostname on tailnet. Will become <hostname>.your-tailnet.ts.net	idp
-port <port>	Port to listen on	443
-local-port <port>	Listen on localhost:<port>. Useful for testing	disabled
-use-local-tailscaled	Use local tailscaled instead of tsnet	false
-funnel	Use Tailscale Funnel to make tsidp available on the public internet so it works with SaaS products	disabled
-enable-sts	Enable OAuth token exchange using RFC 8693	disabled
-log <level>	Set logging level: debug, info, warn, error	info
-debug-all-requests	For development. Prints all requests and responses	disabled
-debug-tsnet	For development. Enables debug level logging with tsnet connection	disabled

CLI Environment Variables

The tsidp-server binary is configured through the CLI flags above. However, there are several environment variables that configure the libraries tsidp-server uses to connect to the tailnet.

Required

• TAILSCALE_USE_WIP_CODE=1: required while tsidp is in development (<v1.0.0).

Optional

These environment variables are used when tsidp does not have any state information set in -dir <path>.

Warning

Serverless/Stateless Deployment: tsidp requires persistent state storage to function properly in production. Without a persistent -dir, the service will re-register with Tailscale on every restart, lose dynamic OIDC client registrations, and invalidate user sessions. Serverless environments without persistent storage are not recommended for production use.

• TS_AUTHKEY=<key>: Key for registering a tsidp as a new node on your tailnet. Can be a traditional auth key or OAuth client secret (tskey-client-xxx). If omitted, a link will be printed to manually register.
• TS_ADVERTISE_TAGS=<tags>: Comma-separated advertise tags (e.g., "tag:tsidp,tag:server"). Optional, but required when using OAuth client secrets.
• TSNET_FORCE_LOGIN=1: Force re-login of the node. Useful during development.

Docker Environment Variables

The Docker image exposes the CLI flags through environment variables. If omitted the default values for the CLI flags will be used.

[!NOTE] > TS_STATE_DIR and TS_HOSTNAME are legacy names. These will be replaced by TSIDP_STATE_DIR and TSIDP_HOSTNAME in the future.

Environment Variable	CLI flag
TS_STATE_DIR=<path> *note prefix	-dir <path>
TS_HOSTNAME=<hostname> *note prefix	-hostname <hostname>
TSIDP_PORT=<port>	-port <port>
TSIDP_LOCAL_PORT=<local-port>	-local-port <local-port>
TSIDP_USE_FUNNEL=1	-funnel
TSIDP_ENABLE_STS=1	-enable-sts
TSIDP_LOG=<level>	-log <level>
TSIDP_DEBUG_TSNET=1	-debug-tsnet
TSIDP_DEBUG_ALL_REQUESTS=1	-debug-all-requests
TS_AUTHKEY=<key>	(env var only)
TS_ADVERTISE_TAGS=<tags>	(env var only)

Application Configuration Guides (WIP)

tsidp can be used as IdP server for any application that supports custom OIDC providers.

Important

Note: If you'd like to use tsidp to login to a SaaS application outside of your tailnet rather than a self-hosted app inside of your tailnet, you'll need to run tsidp with --funnel enabled.

• Proxmox

TODOs

• (TODO) Grafana
• (TODO) open-webui
• (TODO) Jellyfin
• (TODO) Salesforce
• (TODO) ...

MCP Configuration Guides

tsidp supports all of the endpoints required & suggested by the MCP Authorization specification, including Dynamic Client Registration (DCR). More information can be found in the following examples:

• MCP Client / Server
• MCP Client / Gateway Server

Support

This is an experimental, work in progress, community project. For issues or questions, file issues on the GitHub repository.

License

BSD-3-Clause License. See LICENSE for details.