Accounts & profiles

Profiles are local labels

A profile is a name you choose for an embedded Tailscale node. There is no special meaning to personal or work:

tailmux login lab
tailmux login client-project
tailmux ssh lab/worker

Profile names start with a letter or digit and may contain letters, digits, hyphens, and underscores, up to 63 characters.

One process, independent identities

The local Tailmux daemon owns one tsnet.Server per active profile. Each stores its identity in a separate state/<profile> directory.

Connections for a target use that profile's network stack. Tailmux does not route traffic between the accounts or require your remote machines to join both networks.

Terminal connections and port-forwarding tunnels use the same selected profile and SSH settings. Local named HTTP routes can reach hosts in separate tailnets without joining those networks together.

The daemon starts on demand and shares a profile across simultaneous CLI commands and terminals. A local process lock prevents two daemons from taking ownership of the same state directory.

Discovery and access

tailmux hosts shows peers visible to each connected profile. Visibility does not guarantee SSH access: the tailnet policy, the host's SSH service, and your SSH user authentication still apply.

If a work account requires device approval, enroll the Tailmux node through your organization's normal process.

Persistent state

Keep your state directory when rebuilding or upgrading. Removing it can create a new node on the next login, leaving the previous node registered in Tailscale.

Tailmux currently has no profile-removal command. If you retire a profile, stop its use and remove the obsolete node through the Tailscale admin console before discarding its state. Do not delete a host you still use.