My wife and I have a mobile group/shared bot system where we can make mini apps and collab.
Anything from baby stuff, groceries, shopping, planning, wine tracker app, simple/fun/useful data things, etc…
We have Tailscale on our phones and can instantly and privately see without deployment or anything crazy via our secure VPN.
Think shared Claude Artifacts that don’t live @ Anthropic.
Tried to first do this with Cloudflare Tunnels (because I love Cloudflare), but between the broken dashboard side of Zero Trust and nightmare of Warp… it was basically impossible to setup. I guess that’s all super enterprise, which seems to be very anti-Cloudflare philosophically to not be able to self do things.
Will check out Quick Tunnels but I think it’s missing the bigger integration offerings Tailscale has/does still.
allthetime 5 minutes ago [-]
I use public dns routed to private Tailscale ips for all my home services. If i want to expose something for friends who don’t use Tailscale I connect a cloudflare tunnel… it’s pretty much a couple clicks and typing in a subdomain name once cloudflared is running on a server… what were you having trouble with?
theturtletalks 10 hours ago [-]
Tailscale is truly a cheat code. I have a web app that I run locally to control terminals on my Mac. I access the website on my phone using the 100.xx IP address and can code on the go. No need for a Mac or iOS app.
You can also use Tailscale serve to get a HTTPS url like Cloudflared but it's only visible to your tailnet. Be careful using Cloudflare tunnels because they are public and bots start poking around immediately.
0x1ch 9 hours ago [-]
Alternatively, Netbird has been a dream to use over the last half year or so. I think their server software has had some hiccups on new releases, but I stagger those updates anyways. All self hosted, similar concept to Tailscale, very good management UI baked into the self hosted product.
drakenot 33 minutes ago [-]
For those who use Netbird or Pangolin, I'm trying to understand where it would come in handy over my Wireguard-Easy setup with my phone & laptops configured to connect to my Wireguard network externally.
Is this primarily for multi-user scenarios or complex setups?
garettmd 8 hours ago [-]
Netbird's great. I've been using Pangolin (https://pangolin.net/) lately for my homelab. It's very similar in functionality to Netbird, but I like the UX of it better.
nickspacek 52 minutes ago [-]
Switched from Pangolin to Netbird recently and enjoy Netbird more!
0x1ch 7 hours ago [-]
Also a very good alternative. I went on a spree and tried out all of the self hostable alternatives and this was definitely a runner up to netbird. The self hosted tailscale is also good, just not as polished as these two projects are.
drcongo 7 hours ago [-]
I switched from Tailscale to Netbird purely because of Tailscale's bizarre pricing tiers - I wanted just the SSH features, with multiple users, but the paid tier up from free didn't include the SSH features.
allthetime 4 minutes ago [-]
What ssh features? You can have a hundred devices connected for free and they can all just ssh to each other directly
0x1ch 7 hours ago [-]
I think Tailscale would've fit my needs perfectly fine, but the management makes access control and grouping dead simple in netbird. It also generates a nice little map of your peers, their groups, and connected nodes etc. Quick visual on your topology.
SparkyMcUnicorn 9 hours ago [-]
> You can also use Tailscale serve to get a HTTPS url like Cloudflared but it's only visible to your tailnet
For public access, similar to these cloudflare tunnels, there's Tailscale Funnel.
Tailscale funnel works well but you can only have 1 per Tailscale instance (1 per machine) at the https endpoint so if you want to have a few apps, the others will go on non-https, custom-port URLs.
bakkoting 7 hours ago [-]
You can set up paths that route to different local ports. As long as your apps don't need to live at the root path you can have as many as you like. And you can still have something on the root path as long as it doesn't need the subpath.
That's why I keep using tsnet directly, where you can have as many virtual machines, doing sharing or funneling, as you want to.
The CLI doesn't let you do as much as the go library does.
8 hours ago [-]
fragmede 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
prtmnth 2 hours ago [-]
Using Tailscale in exactly the same way. It has been such a blessing!
girvo 5 hours ago [-]
I love TailScale but was getting crazy battery drain on my iPhone with it installed and setup. Still use it, just not from my phone now
devilbunny 1 hours ago [-]
Were you using an exit node? Because that really does hammer the battery, but vanilla TS without a bunch of traffic doesn't seem to do much to mine.
The only always-on TS service on my phone is Immich for photo backup, and I don't take enough photos for that to matter much.
aborsy 35 minutes ago [-]
You should compare battery consumption of TS exit node with something like WG app which low
eloisius 3 hours ago [-]
I have the same experience and I once found a GitHub issue about it. I don’t think it sounded like they planned to fix it anytime soon. I just added the Tailscale toggle button to my phone’s quick control panel and turn it on whenever I want to check all my syncthing nodes or something. I keep meaning to see if I can script up something with Shortcuts to make it turn back off automatically.
tenuousemphasis 3 hours ago [-]
Strange, battery use is negligible on Android, particularly when the tunnel is not in active use.
_user_account 8 hours ago [-]
just use wireguard; tailscale is just the SSO enterprise overlay with a pricing tab.
pocksuppet 7 hours ago [-]
Wireguard is great for a point-to-point or multipoint VPN set up by a competent network administrator between machines with static addresses. But that's the only thing it does. It does not handle authentication or mobility very well.
matthewmacleod 8 hours ago [-]
No, it’s not. It handles the keys, provisioning, DNS, NAT traversal, and a bunch of other stuff. WireGuard is a great technology - Tailscale is like a usability layer on top of it.
herpdyderp 8 hours ago [-]
I pay Tailscale nothing, why switch?
titularcomment 8 hours ago [-]
I think an important feature for homelabs is NAT traversal
dlopes7 7 hours ago [-]
I use tailscale on my steam deck to play stardew valley with my son on my laptop, it truly is amazing
cbsks 10 hours ago [-]
> My wife and I have a mobile group/shared bot system where we can make mini apps and collab.
> Anything from baby stuff, groceries, shopping, planning, wine tracker app, simple/fun/useful data things, etc…
Can you elaborate on this? Sounds really cool!
dizzard 8 hours ago [-]
Not OP- I think there’s been some cool solutions popping up around hosting personal apps. On the front page this week was Capsule (https://withcapsule.app/). My personal solution is Exhibit (https://github.com/momja/Exhibit) which also has the goal of being a self-hostable artifact store.
rambleraptor 8 hours ago [-]
I’ve been building something similar with [Homestead](https://myhomestead.dev). It’s my OSS solution for building mini apps. Each mini app is a Resct frontend and the backend (storage, auth, MCP, API, etc) just comes for free.
SwamyM 9 hours ago [-]
Seconded.
U4E4 9 hours ago [-]
I’m not GP, but run something that’s pretty close to GPs description. It’s been a fun journey to set up.
The core is chat+audio/video call server running locally on my m3 Mac Studio. Centrifugo has handled the chat concerns very well. LiveKit was a really nice foundation for video and audio calls. There are a few different options for local STT if you want that.
I used RN via expo for the client and have my friends and family on TestFlight as beta testers. Utility over polish.
With messages and call transcripts on my own box, I can prompt Claude code or Codex to operate on any message or transcript content. And follow up in chat with a message. I do most of that from Claude or ChatGPT mobile apps via remote control to my sessions running in the box.
From there, if I give enough of a specc, anything that happens in chat or call transcripts can become an additional custom workspace in the main app. I think GP calls these mini apps. But they’re essentially rich clients under the main app umbrella. There’s other details, but yeah it’s a strange new world. Check my profile and reach out directly if you want.
9 hours ago [-]
gibs0ns 1 hours ago [-]
I have really enjoyed the experience of OpenZiti for this purpose. Being able to host dark services and impose granular access controls and routing for different clients is a game changer.
For the few services I host that require SSL (eg; WebUSB), I serve the dark service via a standard domain (example.com) so I can still get a LetsEncrypt cert, but public access to that domain resolves to a static page; "Plz connect to OpenZiti & try again". This allows me to have SSL on required dark services without requiring to install a private CA for each client.
ramoz 2 hours ago [-]
> Think shared Claude Artifacts that don’t live @ Anthropic.
Shameless plug, I've built a self-hosted capability here with things like live collaboration for humans and agents. There is a native cloudflare deplyoment and integration with Cloudflare Artifacts. PR for tunnel would be appreciated.
> it’s missing the bigger integration offerings Tailscale has/does still.
Until I had tailscale serve generating valid certs, I had a good reason to use Cloudflare tunnels.
But in general I don't want to put everything on the internet side of things.
Mostly, I don't want something open, but more like a "share with" for people who are in the same office (virtually over tailnet, not physically on the same LAN).
This still works great for a demo instead of a product pitch, to send an link out to see something.
I'd still use a real host over a laptop for those.
noir_lord 10 hours ago [-]
Only reason I have it (cloud flare tunnels) setup for personal use is because I had to do it for work years ago and yeah, Enterprise(tm) is a good description, haven't touched it in years so when it breaks I'll likely use something else.
Getting it to do what I wanted with a traefik front router with cloudflared talking to arbitrary subdomain that is spun up and broadcast from the other project side was very painful in a "this could be more friendly" way.
It has been truly bulletproof though since then so that's almost enough to make me go reread all the docs.
nemosaltat 10 hours ago [-]
Us too, consider using your bots to migrate your tailnet to headscale. Daily driving Headscale + Headplane + Tailscale’s graciously provided/compatible native apps makes me feel like my devices are truly under my control.
DaSHacka 6 hours ago [-]
If only headscale supported tailnet lock and multiple control servers. They consider both features "enterprise" even though the former is arguably a bare minimum and the latter nice even for home users in the event their lab gets taken offline.
roberttod 8 hours ago [-]
Does this work with remote agents though? I want my claude.ai agents running on my phone to be able to hit my local MCPs on my Mac Mini - my understanding is that tailscale wouldn't work because the execution is being called remotely. But seems like these tunnels would support that.
threecheese 7 hours ago [-]
If by local MCP you mean stdio, then a tailnet won't help you unless you proxy the local MCP using something like mcp-proxy: https://github.com/sparfenyuk/mcp-proxy . That local mcp is only exposed to apps on the machine.
The flow is Phone client --> agent harness or whatev --> Tailnet --> Mac Mini --> mcp-proxy http listener --> local mcp. But you need to wrap the local mcp runner in the proxy (check the docs).
EDIT you don't mean running on your actual phone lol, you mean in the web browser at Claude.ai. Anyway, if you use mcp-proxy for a stdio mcp, or if it's an http mcp alone, then you would need a public endpoint for Claude.ai to connect to. Tailscale will only help you if you use Funnel, but this cloudflare thing is exactly what you need (w/o Tailscale).
dalberto 6 hours ago [-]
I built something for this exact use-case using Cloudflare Tunnels:
if both your mac mini and your phone are on the same tailnet, can't you just ssh to your mac mini from your phone's terminal emulator and have claude code/codex run on it?
wildzzz 6 hours ago [-]
I just use /remote-control. You can't do everything from remote but it's was easier just opening the Claude app than using ssh. And I don't need to be on my tailnet either.
unixhero 7 hours ago [-]
That's really cool! I really want something like that. Care to share what your stack is? My wife would love having that super power.
FridayCuriousit 10 hours ago [-]
Interested in the the bot system and how your self publishing app artifacts that you've got running. Care to share more?
U4E4 8 hours ago [-]
I run something similar, and in my system an app artifact is typically just a rich react component in a React Native client. They usually start as prototypes in chat, similar to what the labs provide in their native apps. If I or someone else in my user group wants more depth than a chat widget, then the artifacts can grow into a “workspace”. Oddly enough my richest workspaces have most been for entertainment. DnD, MtG deck building, HN comment thread parsing. And system management. Intrusion detection, feature life cycle/LLM handoff management, call telemetry. I do have a workspace for public county permit lookup which has been handy too. Reach out and I can share more.
nijave 4 hours ago [-]
Don't think we had any issues with Warp but Cloudflare APIs are a bit of a mess. Seems like they've cobbled together and then renamed/rearranged things multiple times now and it's a bit hard to keep up.
Terraform has worked decently well especially since there's a few random settings here and there that aren't exposed anywhere in the UI (facepalm)
_blk 10 hours ago [-]
So you have a phone to phone VPN and each runs services or just a regular rapid/synology at home with containers?
Is a new vibe-coded landing page for a 5-year old product really worthy of being on the front page nowadays? There should at least be a [2021] in the title.
malfist 4 hours ago [-]
I did not know about them and I have a good use for them today. So I found it useful though I agree it needs the date disclaimer
jofzar 2 hours ago [-]
5 years ago imo it was less relevant, if you showed me this then I would be like "cool tech, but other then a specific scenario, why would I care"
nijave 4 hours ago [-]
Didn't these used to be called Argo Tunnels a long time ago? I think Argo Tunnels got repositioned for connecting to origin servers without needing an incoming connection to the origin but I thought they originally did something like this/ngrok
Yeah, I just checked the page
>can connect their server to the Internet with Argo Tunnel for free
reddec 20 minutes ago [-]
I have been developing for my own use something like that but self hosted. There are other solutions, but this one simple, reliable and secure in a way I see it.
UI: fully LLM assisted (not vibe coded, but guided with a lot of iterations).
Backend: hand written, but before release polished via LLM.
Docs: me - input, LLM - output.
The things I am proud:
- it very reliable
- its single binary with reasonable defaults and low memory usage
- SSO out of the box (cause I am using pocketid in my homelab)
Huh I brew installed it and got a working tunnel in like 15 seconds.
lysace 6 hours ago [-]
Install via brew worked. Getting the hostname to resolve took 30 mins of waiting. Have they heard of wildcard DNS?
judge2020 4 hours ago [-]
Cloudflare isn't going to wildcard every domain on their platform just to cure stale cache DNS issues.
lysace 24 minutes ago [-]
That wasn’t the ask though.
The product is falsely advertised as is:
"Cloudflare Quick Tunnels"
This is on one (or two) particular domain(s) where setting up wildcard DNS should be relatively trivial, if they actually cared enough about the UX of this product to make a special case in their code.
keeganpoppen 9 hours ago [-]
yeah am i crazy or could it not like already do this as well? i swear i’ve seen somesuch similar in the cloudflared options. maybe not. but i can second having had some problems over the year getting cloudflared to install/set up correctly. tbf the actual feature works amazing once you get it working.
robertlagrant 8 hours ago [-]
As I understand it you can make a tunnel, but it's under a domain you control and it's a few clicks in the dashboard to set up, and then a something to run in CLI. That's what my homelab uses. This is just a single CLI command and the whole thing is set up.
Nevin1901 13 minutes ago [-]
Cloudflare tunnels are really useful when dealing with webhooks. Way better than Ngrok and you can set it up on a custom subdomain you own. eg: site.yourdomain.com
rplnt 11 hours ago [-]
Are we in an age where no one even bothers to open the product pages they generate? The first subtitle with the font color almost matching the background. Or it's even worse that a human looked at it and said "yep, that's OK"?
lkbm 11 hours ago [-]
It's fine on light mode. It's just the dark mode that's terrible. Seems likely they only tested the former.
Gigachad 5 hours ago [-]
I'm viewing the site on lightmode, clicked one of the #links which scrolled down the page, when I scrolled back up all the sections lost their content and were unusable.
I've never seen someone fail a static page like this. And from a huge company like Cloudflare too..
rplnt 11 hours ago [-]
I see, good point. Some might be confused about my comment then.
brazukadev 8 hours ago [-]
which proves the point OP is making.
jeremyjh 5 hours ago [-]
I find it shocking that they shipped this claudecopy.
eranation 3 hours ago [-]
I’m raising my eyebrows…
reaperducer 11 hours ago [-]
Are we in an age where no one even bothers to open the product pages they generate?
We live in an age of monkey-see-monkey-do management.
When Microsoft axed its QA team, it gave permission for everyone else to make the same stupid mistake.
More like their version of Tailscale funnel I think
skhameneh 10 hours ago [-]
There's a number of comments already about how this page looks vibe coded, I'd add that I'm actually shocked at how much this looks like the output of a one-shot prompt. It's not so much that an LLM was used, but a callout on just how generic this page is. How much iteration went into this? At surface it looks like nearly no iteration.
Edit: Well, they just re-vibed it. Went from the most generic Claude 4.6 era to today’s models, quality wise.
I wish I had saved a copy of the original, because it would have taken me actual solid effort to make a page that generic out of an LLM.
How would you say that? I can't think of a clearer way to say it TBH.
jofzar 2 hours ago [-]
"Traffic routes via Cloudflare's network"?
hackernud3s 1 hours ago [-]
It routes from closest PoP to visitor -> closest PoP to origin. Your way doesn't convey that as clearly IMHO.
vlyan 9 hours ago [-]
I'll take that over corporate memphis of the previous decade.
(idk if it's really declining or I simply haven't noticed it in a while)
PufPufPuf 9 hours ago [-]
Group of three cards, each with a left-aligned icon, heading and subheading stacked -- that's the m-dash of web design.
ghoshbishakh 9 hours ago [-]
This is a very good solution for HTTP(S) tunneling - which is the most frequently needed tunnel. However if you want to play a game, or use SSH, then Pinggy tunnels are very simple to use. One command:
ssh -p 443 -R0:localhost:443 tcp@free.pinggy.io
Disclosure: Co-founder of pinggy.io here.
Edit: I meant TCP tunnels, UDP tunnels, or also TLS tunnels for end-to-end encryption.
caymanjim 8 hours ago [-]
What kind of usage limits?
ghoshbishakh 8 hours ago [-]
A free session runs for 60 seconds after which it has to be restarted and the address changes.
You can get the address with an API call.. but we charge for convenience. Pays the infra bills.
tonymet 8 hours ago [-]
i love this! never understood why a proxy app was needed
fragmede 8 hours ago [-]
So you don't know my IP (DDoS target), and because of NAT.
tredre3 7 hours ago [-]
I think tonymet meant he didn't understand why cloudflare didn't allow using ssh -R instead of cloudflared to create the tunnel, not not using a tunnel at all.
judge2020 4 hours ago [-]
cloudflared is a bit unique in that it makes multiple outbound connections to CF DCs to do the tunneling and fails over if a DC has an issue (or, more likely, when a DC is near-capacity and they need to divert lower-tier traffic away from it[0]). SSH would reintroduce a single point of failure to this.
Also, the _main_ use case of `cloudflared` tunneling is using it as a long-term way to host production websites on your own hostname. the ability to create ad-hoc tunnels is more of a gimmick / advertising opportunity.
any app will connect with an IP am I missing something . a socket is exactly (IP, port) (src, target) tuple
c0wb0yc0d3r 7 hours ago [-]
For me, it’s as much about ease of use as much as it is about minimizing attack surface area.
Also the lifetime I need the connection open. For something quick, ssh tunnel. For something normies use, reverse proxy. Ain’t trying to teach my parents about IP addresses and port numbers.
tonymet 6 hours ago [-]
tredre3 explained it above
israrkhan 11 hours ago [-]
For someone looking for an opensource solutions, following is an awesome resource for tunnelling
frp is nice. I have the tiniest Amazon Lightsail instance running a tunnel to a Minecraft server in my basement. It’s cheaper than getting a fixed IP from my ISP, at sufficiently low traffic.
aliasxneo 12 hours ago [-]
Tunneling was something that recently fell out of the work I've been doing [1]. I've used Cloudflare Tunnels before but I just have low trust with them recently with how big they are getting. All of these nice things come at the cost of pushing _a lot_ of traffic through their systems.
Reality check - you are not pushing “_a lot_” of traffic relative to any hyperscaler or large scale CDN. They push hundreds of Tbps sustained. You don’t peak at a few Mbps.
They can monitor extreme outliers. It’s not an issue for them.
aliasxneo 11 hours ago [-]
In hindsight, that was probably a confusing sentence. I was more pointing out how much traffic flows trough their systems which ends up making it an attractive honeypot, especially as a U.S. company.
pstoll 2 hours ago [-]
Sure any centralization of infra is an obvious risk for a myriad of reasons eg DoS, manipulation, honeypots, etc.
But again my point applies - the chances they get enough people using it that it becomes a meaningfully worse security target than lots of other existing things seems … super low.
It’s a big world, people make many choices I can’t understand (nix? Haskell? Php? <flame wars to /dev/null>). Even if this product nailed it - the number of people who can use it is minuscule - yes even as we add Claude-enabled PMs to the software dev ranks.
Alt view with the old saying - “put all your eggs in one basket … and watch that basket!”
ijustlovemath 11 hours ago [-]
I think they're talking about market capture risks
simonw 11 hours ago [-]
If there's any company in the world that can survive a lot of extra traffic being pushed through their systems it's Cloudflare.
I bet these new tunnels end up being a fraction of a percentage point of their network traffic.
aliasxneo 11 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I don't doubt their infrastructure at all. In fact, I rate them fairly high in terms of reliability and performance. I've honestly been a fan of them for a very long time - it's just I'm watching all of this centralization happen and it sets my Spidey sense off. Like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
simonw 10 hours ago [-]
Gotcha, that totally makes sense.
swozey 9 hours ago [-]
The "centralization" which is cloudflare basically running its own walled garden version of the interent (how often do you see a cloudflare page checking if you're human?) is exactly why a lot of people do NOT like cloudflare. And if you've known about CF and its leadership since their inception you'd be even more wary of sticking your stuff over there.
I've migrated many companies off of cloudflare, usually because they end up pissing off companies when a contract renewal comes up and they slam them with massively increased bills and almost useless support if you aren't very high paying enterprise. I don't know how many CF support tickets I've just given up on over the last 15 years, usually related to their admin page, workers or some weird thing their system does that wasn't documented and I just stop getting responses and definitely don't get fixes.
If you ever worked in webhosting the Cloudflare wordpress/etc extensions are everywhere and back when I did work in hosting tons of support tickets were made because of CF. Could be way better now, I don't go near that industry these days.
The casual CF user sticking it in front of a blog they rarely look at and the business forced CF user has a very different experience. I cringe and seriously consider if I'm interviewing for an infra role and they use cloudflare. Usually it's startups that grew into larger businesses.
ceejayoz 11 hours ago [-]
I didn't take it as a capacity concern, but a "how much data do they get to look at" one.
bix6 11 hours ago [-]
It’s a concentration of power issue.
robertlagrant 6 hours ago [-]
Given they seem to mostly offer services that are about as easy to switch away from as you could hope for, compared to, say, companies who write loads of CF that only runs on AWS, and I can't imagine why this keeps on being said for Cloudflare specifically. What power do they have?
mitxela 3 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter that they're easy to switch away from. It matters that people haven't actually switched away from them.
eli 11 hours ago [-]
Don’t the free tunnels have explicit limits on bandwidth and streaming?
Tepix 11 hours ago [-]
They see all the traffic in cleartext. Plus you have to trust them not to maliciously alter your traffic. As a US company, their options may be limited if they are coerced by their government to do so.
insanitybit 11 hours ago [-]
Just use TLS / mTLS over the tunnel, no?
Perz1val 10 hours ago [-]
Interesting how 4/4 other replies didn't get the centralisation concern despite it being a fairly often discussed topic
ozozozd 6 hours ago [-]
Your opening piqued my interest, but:
“The substrate itself consists of a few systems…”
I doubt that this is how wordy your communication is.
“It consists of a few systems” would be adequate. And if we had prior context about what else exists that surrounds “the substrate” the “substrate itself” distinction would be meaningful, but it’s not, because you are referring to one object, which is the system you built, and I doubt any enzymes act on it, so it’s likely not a substrate.
Cloudflare want you to push traffic through their systems. This is yet another traffic generator to drive up Cloudflare’s leverage when negotiating peering with carriers & service providers, in order to drive down the marginal cost of bandwidth for Cloudflare’s actual product viz. the enterprise DDoS protection.
mitxela 3 hours ago [-]
True. Same reason Hurricane Electric peers promiscuously. I'm surprised more networks don't, to be honest - wouldn't say DTAG prefer that you peer with DTAG than peer with HE upstream of DTAG?
afzalive 11 hours ago [-]
This is pretty great and I think this will be quite important in the age where everyone has their self-hosted services.
dangoodmanUT 12 hours ago [-]
Historically, we’ve found that their tunnels have really high latency variance. For example something that’s normally 30-50ms to ec2 is now 115ms-750ms
hackernud3s 4 hours ago [-]
Because it travels along their edge. It's apples and oranges to your AWS tunnel.
dangoodmanUT 2 hours ago [-]
No, they claim their edge is better for residential connections to your backend. We tried multiple SF to us-east-1 and it was always substantially worse
mgw 9 hours ago [-]
Can anyone elaborate on what's new? This exact product has existed from Cloudflare for years. Is it just that they added a new marketing site for it?
6thbit 9 hours ago [-]
"quick" tunnels you can make by installing cloudflare software and running a command, without a cloudflare account, using a fixed "trycloudflare.com" domain and not your own domain.
existing (slow) tunnels you can create once you've set up your own domain for cloudflare to manage its DNS, installing cloudflare software, logging in to your account, and running a similar command.
edit: my bad, quick ones aren't new at all
misnome 9 hours ago [-]
This has been the behaviour when you launch but don’t connect a specific tunnel for at least a couple of years
mmoustafa 8 hours ago [-]
Quick tunnels have existed since at least 2022 (when I was using them)
mmoustafa 8 hours ago [-]
Nothing is new, quick tunnels were launched in 2021
Tailscale is one of the most profoundly useful technologies I’ve ever used as small business person. It’s also one I would have never thought to invent despite feeling its lack daily.
inconshreveable 7 hours ago [-]
hi y'all, ngrok creator/founder here.
we removed anonymous usage of our product many years ago because it was far and away the largest source of abuse on our entire platform.
i believe at this point that that anonymous, account-less tunneling services like this are net negative for the security of the internet
happy to answer any questions from the community
Gigachad 5 hours ago [-]
The marketing from Cloudflare around this being for agents feels like the intended use case is for agents to exfiltrate data off your laptop without pesky hurdles like asking the user to set up an account first.
jeremyjh 5 hours ago [-]
Would you ever ship a product where all the ad copy was written by an AI and read by no one?
mitxela 3 hours ago [-]
I'd expect an anonymous inbound tunnel to be better than an anonymous outbound proxy and we have plenty of the latter.
opengrass 5 hours ago [-]
It's not a security issue, it's a liability issue!
whizzter 12 hours ago [-]
Don't all these free proxy services always fall prey to blacklists because scammers,etc abuse them until they're useless?
uxjw 10 hours ago [-]
Probably why they used the trycloudflare.com domain as they expect it to be blocked.
axus 11 hours ago [-]
Wow, exfiltrating data has never been easier!
srichard16 10 hours ago [-]
Can confirm. Coming from ngrok, the main reason we had to make tunneling not anonymized etc was because of scammers, etc on the internet. Other players in the space bypass this by open sourcing the tech, or separating the architecture entirely. This is cool and all, but ultimately gives nefarious actors on the internet more opportunities.
noname120 4 hours ago [-]
How does “open sourcing the tech” “give nefarious actors on the internet more opportunities”? Sounds like a paltry excuse for not open sourcing your tech.
Imustaskforhelp 12 hours ago [-]
Yes they actually do, but because its cloudflare which is offering this, blacklisting it might lead to blacklisting can be more negative and cloudflare has a much higher incentive to not make these tunnels useless. They are also more powerful and can fix things which would be harder for smaller companies to handle (atleast within the context of cloudflare tunnels)
mitxela 3 hours ago [-]
Spain blacklisted Cloudflare and everyone hates it, but it proves it can happen.
afisxisto 10 hours ago [-]
I quite like pinggy for this. You don't need to install anything, since it uses a plain SSH tunnel.
ssh -p 443 -R0:localhost:9051 free.pinggy.io
(Free for 1h each session)
mitxela 3 hours ago [-]
You can also do this on any server you have:
ssh -R 0.0.0.0:80:localhost:9051 myserver
Make sure server sshd config has: GatewayPorts yes
ghoshbishakh 9 hours ago [-]
Thanks for sharing.
- Co-founder of Pinggy.
infogulch 10 hours ago [-]
I made my own tunnel system with a $5/mo vps that runs kernel wireguard and accepts my nas' public key. Once connected it DNATs 80/443 traffic down the tunnel to the nas, where its routed to caddy.
The vps runs a custom image that is 2.54 Megabytes. It has a custom kernel with almost everything but networking and wireguard disabled, a fixed-size fs with pre-allocated blocks and inodes to hold the vps wireguard key, and a single pid 1 binary that calls the kernel directly to set up the routing rules, generate a new wireguard key on first boot and save it to the fs, print out the wireguard public key to the console, and loops reap. Updating involves building and uploading a new image, assigning the vps to use it, reboot, wait for the public key in the console then set it on the nas so they can talk.
RedCinnabar 8 hours ago [-]
Very cool, do you use some kind of an atomic distro like nix or something entirely self built using Yocto/Buildroot? I do something similar with a simple SSH tunnel and a NFT rule. Though, I don’t need your kind of ephemeral setup and so I just use Debian.
infogulch 2 hours ago [-]
Thanks! The build system is nix, but the result is more of an appliance than a distro. (linuxManualConfig from tinyconfig + fragment, static musl Rust PID 1, mke2fs -d) Updates are rebuild-redeploy with the provider API; it can't update itself. The filesystem is a fixed-size image (even omitting resize2fs, so no growing onto the VPS disk), and it remounts read-only after boot. The boot log is 270 kernel lines then 4 userspace: 1 nftables loaded, 2 printing the gate's wg0 public key, 1 remounting ro.
yuchi 9 hours ago [-]
I still remember when ngrok came out. The experience was more or less the same.
It’s interesting that 10 (more?) years later the product has not evolved and, apparently, hasn’t found a way to finance itself without removing the pure free tunneling option.
mintflow 2 hours ago [-]
perhaps this is the most easy to use networking product that ever shipped, but given ngrok did this many years before, maybe they just think for the agentic era? though one must take care for the authentification
I also think it seems cloudflare enter into a stage keep adding products and make the portal looks like a maze to get more advanced features configured
Do you still remember cloudflare mesh and use and stick to it?
Don't pass -d, your tunnel URL prints in the console and you can download dirs as tarball.
himata4113 11 hours ago [-]
This has existed for a long time and has been abused by quite a few people. I've seen some cc nodes using a random known cloudflare site and spoofing hostname to a temporary cloudflare site. IMO this should require a login at bare minimum.
booi 11 hours ago [-]
if you think people won't abuse it because you're making them log in with a free email address...
himata4113 11 hours ago [-]
This requires zero effort and you can deploy hundreds to thousands while maintaining 1000 gmail, proton etc takes resources and money.
booi 10 hours ago [-]
They already do this. the email accounts already exist
Narciss 11 hours ago [-]
My AI discovered this days ago when I wanted to deploy a new vibe coded website (it was to keep score while playing whist and rentz)
Thought it was very cool
nyxtom 2 hours ago [-]
I've used these tunnels all the time when I wasn't at my computer. Insanely helpful when doing agentic work on the go
rock_artist 10 hours ago [-]
What's surprised me, just earlier today I let Codex write a minor PR for simple open-source webapp. I needed HTTPS for testing secured context Web API. (Web Bluetooth)
While testing it locally Codex by itself suggests using CF Tunnels but what's more interesting it actually used the Quick Tunnels.
Coming from days where I get warnings of vibe-coded generated code using deprecated code or older APIs, I must say using something so fresh is quite impressive.
awwaiid 8 hours ago [-]
As far as I know this has been a provided feature of cloudflare for several years. I don't understand why it was posted today.
girvo 5 hours ago [-]
This is super neat! I rely on normal Cloudflare Tunnels for my self-hosted website/web apps, works shockingly well all things considered.
It was pretty easy to setup… but I cheated, and use Dokploy which handled most of it AFAICT
JV00 12 hours ago [-]
Does this have a more generous allowance than ngrok? From what I can read no limits are mentioned
raahelb 11 hours ago [-]
These are the limitations mentioned on the docs [1]. Quick Tunnels are subject to a hard limit on the number of concurrent requests that can be proxied at any point in time. Currently, this limit is 200 in-flight requests. If a Quick Tunnel hits this limit, the HTTP response will return a 429 status code. Quick Tunnels do not support Server-Sent Events (SSE).
I don't know if there's an overall limit, but their regular tunnels have a limit of 100 MB per request which breaks stuff like Immich.
everybodyknows 10 hours ago [-]
The page is a fine exemplar of marketing deception. Banner says:
> Free, secure tunnel for everything you are building.
> Preview and ship ideas globally in seconds with Quick Tunnels. Deploy your local application to the Internet with a single command.
Clicking through Explore Cloudflare Tunnel leads us to:
> Looking to expose public applications?
This documentation covers Cloudflare Tunnel use cases for private networking and Zero Trust, like VPN replacement and private network access. For publishing public web applications, APIs, and services to the Internet through Cloudflare refer to ...
JeremyJaydan 5 hours ago [-]
I used Cloudflared tunnels for a while in production, they worked very well but the config was a bit of a pain sometimes. It's nice to see a simpler version even if it's just for testing.
pocksuppet 7 hours ago [-]
This is obviously vibe written, and I can't wait to see how quickly it will be shut down after someone uses it in combination with Mullvad to host child pornography.
Mullvad themselves already turned off port forwarding because people were using it to host child pornography. This is like Mullvad's port forwarding, but free.
throawayonthe 7 hours ago [-]
they've been running the tunnels service for years
and they also provide web hosting..
kalcode 7 hours ago [-]
It's the AI witch-hunt these days. Salam trails coming soon to you're nearest artist! "That's AI!!!"
Sigh... HN littered with it these days.
dzonga 6 hours ago [-]
I have been considering using my other laptop as a place to run my agents in production since 1. my laptop is more powerful than the vps I can rent for cheap.
then just use Cloudflare tunnels to connect to the laptop.
_pdp_ 10 hours ago [-]
It will be nice if it had persistent URLs and and SDK for desktop applications. It could solve a lot of small issues for a project I am currently busy with.
cmacleod4 9 hours ago [-]
I've been running a couple of websites* on a home machine behind a Cloudflare tunnel for 2-3 years now. The only thing I had to pay for was the DNS registration. There are limits on the traffic you can serve on their free plan, but I'm nowhere near reaching those. I don't know what an SDK would add, you just set up a web server using whatever method suits you, then configure the cloudflared to connect to that. I did find that the online dashboard could not support all the options I wanted, so I switched to using the config file method - it would have been easier if I used that method from the start.
One caveat - there is an option to inject Javascript into your pages for traffic measurement which is ON BY DEFAULT, you have to go to "Web Analytics" and turn this off if you don't want it!
That's handled by all the prior releases of cloudflare tunnels
srichard16 10 hours ago [-]
ngrok does this free, but with an account
sparc24 8 hours ago [-]
Worst marketing ever. ngrok had a similar slogan:
something like - "We help you put localhost on the Internet."
What could possibly go wrong?
m00x 8 hours ago [-]
How many ways can you convey doing the same thing? All the banks out there have almost identical slogans because they do very similar things.
hashstring 8 hours ago [-]
Hm, yeah, depends who you’re marketing this to.
Also, the “0 ports opened” marketing is misleading. It still binds to a port and then also lets people access your resources over it.
I dislike that Cloudflare Engineering has become more… marketingy as of late. Also with their Cloudflare OS misnomer. Their products used to make more sense, what happened?
mitxela 3 hours ago [-]
Marketing is meant to be misleading. That's how it works.
_user_account 8 hours ago [-]
The main use case: cloud harnesses to access your local network; I highly recommend to run the harness in your local network instead, then you own the session, no tunnel needed.
The other use case for webhooks is ok, but is exactly what ngrok already does since forever with a pretty high free quota.
8 hours ago [-]
emadabdulrahim 8 hours ago [-]
Does this make working with agents in cloud more interesting? Maybe now I can see my changes right away without waiting for the build and deploy? By running the dev server and tunneling from the sandbox giving me a direct url access somehow?
Can someone chime in here?
nickgray 8 hours ago [-]
This is cool. I like it! Also Cloudflare design has stepped up so much over the past 2 years.
ggg011012 11 hours ago [-]
Quick Tunnels look great for demos and temporary dev environments. I’d still be hesitant to make them part of a long-lived production setup.
pstoll 11 hours ago [-]
You should be more than hesitant - don’t do it. They literally market them for quick demos. And not long lived production.
rinconrex 10 hours ago [-]
I use for the exact same thing. Running "cloudflared tunnel" sets up a temp solution. No log in needed, pretty convenient.
cryptolobster 6 hours ago [-]
For small-scale personal or family applications serving just a few users, does it make sense to choose Quick Tunnels over Tailscale or Pangolin?
usewik 10 hours ago [-]
how long until someone's agent sets up a tunnel for the world to see one's most sensitive, private and embarrassing information or insecure work-in-progress app? granted, for the brew install some massive permissions are needed, so hopefully for those running their agent's in a sandbox, you should be safe.. should be..
smalltorch 11 hours ago [-]
If your a hobbiest or dev just testing your services, it makes more sense to utilize onion services imho.
It does the exact same thing, except supported by a global network of volunteers around the world.
Sure, you get some latency, but this is actually ideal for testing. You should know how your service operates in non optimal lightning fast conditions.
thenewnewguy 11 hours ago [-]
I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or this is an HN out of touch moment.
The obvious difference (and thus massive advantage) of the cloudfare product is that it is accessible over the normal internet without needing to install a tor client.
I'm sure that works for some subset of the population where all potential users are already comfortable using Tor; but imagine trying to share your PoC website with the designer/client and you are asking them to install Tor browser.
smalltorch 11 hours ago [-]
>hobbiest or dev just testing your services
Is different than sharing your work with a client.
I personally wouldnt make it SOP to utilize a complely free service like this to share my work. I'm not saying it's not convient, it definitely is.
But you shouldn't subject a clients product to terms they probably aren't aware of.
rinconrex 10 hours ago [-]
Oh I use this for testing and demos between my phone and computer. Ngrok is fine, probably better off using Tailscale, but it's very easy to just run a quick tunnel with "cloudflared tunnel --url localhost:XXXX".
kelvinjps10 11 hours ago [-]
What's the difference between this and their previous Cloudflare Tunnels solution?
awwaiid 8 hours ago [-]
As far as I can tell, the difference is that they made a new website? The cloudflared instant tunnels have been around for years, including json output as far as I know.
raahelb 11 hours ago [-]
From their docs [0]:
> Free tunnels are meant to be used for testing and development, not for deploying a production website.
This gives a random trycloudflare.com subdomain each run, the other requires a domain and tunnel key on your account.
ZeroCool2u 12 hours ago [-]
This is handy, but I wonder how much it will cannibalize their services. I have a simple app deployed on cloudflare for a very niche single purpose use, but I wouldn't have bothered if I had this. Serving it from my own machine would have been fine.
aniviacat 12 hours ago [-]
Cloudflare Tunnels has been a free service of Cloudflare for quite a while now. What's new is being able to use them without needing an account.
bakugo 11 hours ago [-]
It's not new. Maybe this page is new, but being able to set up a quick tunnel on trycloudflare.com without an account has been a thing for years.
danserfaty 11 hours ago [-]
Maybe it's a nice way to quickly test a new service or change over the internet without going through the git process, same way one would use ngrok - I could see that being helpful when prototyping / pocs, etc - before deploying changes to your app via the proper channel, especially if you are already using cloudflare for your domains/apps. As other people said, it probably would not be practical or scalable for most people to run an app 24/7 from their laptop using their home or office internet connection.
roncesvalles 11 hours ago [-]
Not many people run their local machine 24/7.
berofeev 11 hours ago [-]
What does reality look like on this nowadays?
My initial thought was desktops generally run 24/7, with laptops running when in use. At least for the customer at the market intersection for this type of product.
JavierFlores09 11 hours ago [-]
I often tell my dev colleagues to avoid having their PC turned on all the time, be it because of the electricity bill cost, environmental impact or simply to make the longevity of the hardware a little longer. Granted almost everyone just ignores those things even if they're conscious of it, so I'd say you're right
seabrookmx 8 hours ago [-]
There's pros and cons on the longevity side. 24/7 use causes more wear to mechanical parts (fans for instance) but can be better for the electronics, as heat cycles are a big part of the problem there.
SoftTalker 9 hours ago [-]
Yeah my desktop is on 24/7. Laptop is on when in use. Phone is on all the time too, of course, but I don't use it for browsing or work nearly as much as my desktop.
roncesvalles 10 hours ago [-]
Very few people own desktops anymore. Generally people only buy desktops if they need to run a GPU, such as for gaming or running a local model.
sophacles 11 hours ago [-]
There are people who turn off their computer?
cmacleod4 9 hours ago [-]
You do if you're hosting a website on it :-)
jdthedisciple 5 hours ago [-]
Interesting but what a horribly vibe coded website that barely works on mobile
Gigachad 5 hours ago [-]
It's broken on desktop too...
greyhound1 4 hours ago [-]
i find it hard to read any text when the site has many animations that can't be stopped
smalltorch 12 hours ago [-]
It's a nice ability, but I dont like the terms of use.
ZeroCool2u 12 hours ago [-]
Anything specific to watch out for?
whizzter 12 hours ago [-]
On what url were those? Or Cloudflare's TOS in general ?
rcarmo 9 hours ago [-]
I want this with TOTP or passkeys. Just giving me a hostname doesn't cut it these days.
narmiouh 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure how safe this is...
vibe coded app with may be no security and now available from the internet for anyone to RCE into my laptop?
nullbyte 10 hours ago [-]
Love this, very cool.
I used to use a service called ngrok for this, but it's nice that Cloudflare is offering one now.
smetannik 10 hours ago [-]
So is this basically a ngrok from CF?
corvad 10 hours ago [-]
This is not anything new they have been around since the tunnels project launched. What is more concerning is the AI slop webpage and just the "AI" centered relaunch of an existing product.
scosman 10 hours ago [-]
The number of vibe coded apps accidentally hosted on dev laptops is about to explode.
singpolyma3 11 hours ago [-]
It looks like tunnels can do some non https stuff these days? But it's a bit unclear
spprashant 10 hours ago [-]
Off-topic: That web page looks exactly like my vibe-coded utilities.
blocke 8 hours ago [-]
Ah yes. We can't let self hosted app traffic flow across the Internet in a way that escapes the vast Internet surveillance system run by the Americans called Cloudflare.
Hmm, Tailscale is too convenient and that traffic is going dark from Cloudflare's all seeing eye.
saejox 6 hours ago [-]
Needs to support tcp and udp
tombert 11 hours ago [-]
I like Cloudflare Tunnels a lot, but something that annoys me is that officially you're not allowed to use them for streaming video, meaning I can't put it in front of my Jellyfin without breaking TOS.
I think that rule is more of a "we reserve the right to..." rule, but it makes me sad because I'd rather not open up ports on my router to expose my Jellyfin to my parents.
TonyStr 11 hours ago [-]
I discovered and set this up the other day, added jellyfin, immich and forgejo and was really happy about the result for five minutes, before I discovered that limitation in the TOS. Now I only use it for forgejo. Have you found a different solution to exposing jellyfin?
tombert 11 hours ago [-]
I have a proxy set up with the Oracle Always Free VMs they provide. It works well enough.
madeforhnyo 11 hours ago [-]
For free idk, I personally use a VPS (with unlimited traffic) and Tailscale. Someone has to pay for the public IP and proxy.
guluarte 10 hours ago [-]
i just use wireguard or tailscale, provision a subdomain with a custom ssl and resolve to a nat ip.
mitxela 3 hours ago [-]
You can put nginx with basic auth in front of jellyfin
bityard 11 hours ago [-]
Bandwidth costs money and streaming video costs several orders of magnitude more than just your random web/dev apps. Asking CF to foot the bill for entertainment streaming is really quite a lot.
tombert 11 hours ago [-]
I know. I'm not "upset" over it, just that it makes the service less useful for me.
tamimio 11 hours ago [-]
Use pangolin (you can self host), been using it for a while and it’s great, under the hood it’s a vpn+reverse proxy which you can do yourself too.
In pangolin you can have public or private resources, where private ones you need to authenticate through pangolin first (either pass or others like pin number for your parents so easy to remember). When you link your domain for public ones, I suggest you make a sub domain for it, so your apps will be a sub to your subdomain, that way you keep control of your main domain while having automatic assignment for your apps rather than manually, and if you didn’t issue a certificate, that sub.subdomain is basically invisible on the internet unless you host a service to expose it.
damsta 11 hours ago [-]
The website looks broken in dark mode on Firefox.
bitlad 10 hours ago [-]
So it is ngrok 10 years later?
dools 5 hours ago [-]
I’ve been using cloudflare tunnels quite a bit in places where I would have traditionally gone for a reverse port forward and they’re working really well. The quick tunnel concept seems really great but the non-quick tunnels are also very useful and can be entirely automated.
bilater 10 hours ago [-]
So this is basically ngrok?
frankcostanza 10 hours ago [-]
So... Cloudflare built Ngrok?
10 hours ago [-]
xeornet 11 hours ago [-]
Looks like they straight up vibe coded the landing page lol.
rozab 11 hours ago [-]
I find it quite shocking that orgs with some great designers like cloudflare are doing this. Broken layouts, trios of random uppercase words sprinkled around. It's crazy. How does it inspire confidence in a product, knowing that the landing page was created in 10 seconds?
maipen 9 hours ago [-]
AI took all the effort, so I guess nobody sees value in these little pages anymore. Not even those being paid. It's actually scary.
user3939382 12 hours ago [-]
I just spent a week writing a harness around the existing tunnels to make this by hand.
tobih 6 hours ago [-]
json output is nice, my agents always had to parse the text output before
rvz 8 hours ago [-]
Seems like the quality of software engineering is now going to zero and just vibe coding unstable alternatives since 2023.
maipen 9 hours ago [-]
I'm sorry to be offtopic, but this website looks like an hallucination generated by chatgpt 4.
This type of quality downgrade is scary, and it's everywhere now.
general_reveal 10 hours ago [-]
Could we turn this into p2p cloud hosting for all?
mitxela 3 hours ago [-]
No, by definition it's not P2P because it's all going through Cloudflare.
AtNightWeCode 11 hours ago [-]
Cool but the obvious flaw with this is that CF leaks DNS-records. So bots will find these urls instantly. Not sure why they have not fixed that or if it is even possible to fix.
rkovashikawa 9 hours ago [-]
cloudflare rocks
nojvek 2 hours ago [-]
I so hate codex speak.
dbmikus 10 hours ago [-]
Now that is one vibe-coded website
superkuh 10 hours ago [-]
Cloudflare's only goal here is to put themselves between everyone and charge a toll. They are running a protection racket where they themselves are causing much of the damage they offer protection from. This is another example.
075326899532 11 hours ago [-]
[ad]
ThrowawayTestr 12 hours ago [-]
No-ip gives out free dynamic DNS with a static URL. I use it for Sunshine desktop streaming when I travel.
cuu508 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but then you are always exposing your public IP.
monster_truck 11 hours ago [-]
Exposing it to what exactly? The internet? Yes that's how it works
cuu508 10 hours ago [-]
If somebody learns that such-and-such DynDNS URL is mine, they can always do a DNS lookup to find my current IP address. They can:
- find my approximate physical location
- regularly scan ports on my IP and wait for me to accidentally expose a service I didn't mean to
- track me in any access logs they have access to
mitxela 3 hours ago [-]
They can, and do, do this with or without DynDNS.
johng 11 hours ago [-]
This requires no port forwarding, so someone brute force scanning your IP won't find this and your open port. they also might have a harder time figuring out what service has been exposed since the port number itself will be unknown.
cute_boi 11 hours ago [-]
what a sloppy website, did cloudflare fired bunch of ui/ux designer? Every text is slop lol.
cub-creature 10 hours ago [-]
I swear if I see one more "pill-badge callout -> header -> subtitle" with gradient background and hover-cards landing page I'm going to crash out
10 hours ago [-]
usewik 10 hours ago [-]
yep, and all those fired and remaining are busy ai-native proofing their careers and tokenmaxxing everything including copy
ouch-blurred52 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
vansh_sethi_vs 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
altmanaltman 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 03:00:25 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Anything from baby stuff, groceries, shopping, planning, wine tracker app, simple/fun/useful data things, etc…
We have Tailscale on our phones and can instantly and privately see without deployment or anything crazy via our secure VPN.
Think shared Claude Artifacts that don’t live @ Anthropic.
Tried to first do this with Cloudflare Tunnels (because I love Cloudflare), but between the broken dashboard side of Zero Trust and nightmare of Warp… it was basically impossible to setup. I guess that’s all super enterprise, which seems to be very anti-Cloudflare philosophically to not be able to self do things.
Will check out Quick Tunnels but I think it’s missing the bigger integration offerings Tailscale has/does still.
You can also use Tailscale serve to get a HTTPS url like Cloudflared but it's only visible to your tailnet. Be careful using Cloudflare tunnels because they are public and bots start poking around immediately.
Is this primarily for multi-user scenarios or complex setups?
For public access, similar to these cloudflare tunnels, there's Tailscale Funnel.
https://tailscale.com/docs/features/tailscale-funnel
Here's `tailscale funnel status` on my machine:
The CLI doesn't let you do as much as the go library does.
The only always-on TS service on my phone is Immich for photo backup, and I don't take enough photos for that to matter much.
> Anything from baby stuff, groceries, shopping, planning, wine tracker app, simple/fun/useful data things, etc…
Can you elaborate on this? Sounds really cool!
The core is chat+audio/video call server running locally on my m3 Mac Studio. Centrifugo has handled the chat concerns very well. LiveKit was a really nice foundation for video and audio calls. There are a few different options for local STT if you want that.
I used RN via expo for the client and have my friends and family on TestFlight as beta testers. Utility over polish.
With messages and call transcripts on my own box, I can prompt Claude code or Codex to operate on any message or transcript content. And follow up in chat with a message. I do most of that from Claude or ChatGPT mobile apps via remote control to my sessions running in the box.
From there, if I give enough of a specc, anything that happens in chat or call transcripts can become an additional custom workspace in the main app. I think GP calls these mini apps. But they’re essentially rich clients under the main app umbrella. There’s other details, but yeah it’s a strange new world. Check my profile and reach out directly if you want.
For the few services I host that require SSL (eg; WebUSB), I serve the dark service via a standard domain (example.com) so I can still get a LetsEncrypt cert, but public access to that domain resolves to a static page; "Plz connect to OpenZiti & try again". This allows me to have SSL on required dark services without requiring to install a private CA for each client.
Shameless plug, I've built a self-hosted capability here with things like live collaboration for humans and agents. There is a native cloudflare deplyoment and integration with Cloudflare Artifacts. PR for tunnel would be appreciated.
https://github.com/plannotator/artifact-server
Until I had tailscale serve generating valid certs, I had a good reason to use Cloudflare tunnels.
But in general I don't want to put everything on the internet side of things.
Mostly, I don't want something open, but more like a "share with" for people who are in the same office (virtually over tailnet, not physically on the same LAN).
This still works great for a demo instead of a product pitch, to send an link out to see something.
I'd still use a real host over a laptop for those.
Getting it to do what I wanted with a traefik front router with cloudflared talking to arbitrary subdomain that is spun up and broadcast from the other project side was very painful in a "this could be more friendly" way.
It has been truly bulletproof though since then so that's almost enough to make me go reread all the docs.
EDIT you don't mean running on your actual phone lol, you mean in the web browser at Claude.ai. Anyway, if you use mcp-proxy for a stdio mcp, or if it's an http mcp alone, then you would need a public endpoint for Claude.ai to connect to. Tailscale will only help you if you use Funnel, but this cloudflare thing is exactly what you need (w/o Tailscale).
https://github.com/dalberto/mcp-ferry
I also use CF managed auth to make auth easier.
Terraform has worked decently well especially since there's a few random settings here and there that aren't exposed anywhere in the UI (facepalm)
Is a new vibe-coded landing page for a 5-year old product really worthy of being on the front page nowadays? There should at least be a [2021] in the title.
Yeah, I just checked the page >can connect their server to the Internet with Argo Tunnel for free
Originally didn't want to share but here it is https://github.com/reddec/tunnel-me
UI: fully LLM assisted (not vibe coded, but guided with a lot of iterations). Backend: hand written, but before release polished via LLM. Docs: me - input, LLM - output.
The things I am proud:
- it very reliable
- its single binary with reasonable defaults and low memory usage
- SSO out of the box (cause I am using pocketid in my homelab)
- very simple backend
The product is falsely advertised as is:
"Cloudflare Quick Tunnels"
This is on one (or two) particular domain(s) where setting up wildcard DNS should be relatively trivial, if they actually cared enough about the UX of this product to make a special case in their code.
I've never seen someone fail a static page like this. And from a huge company like Cloudflare too..
We live in an age of monkey-see-monkey-do management.
When Microsoft axed its QA team, it gave permission for everyone else to make the same stupid mistake.
edit: yeah, it says no account creation, neat!
So cloudflare sees your plaintext. Btw: tailscale does not (but ssl errors and warnings are unavoidable)
https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling
Edit: Well, they just re-vibed it. Went from the most generic Claude 4.6 era to today’s models, quality wise. I wish I had saved a copy of the original, because it would have taken me actual solid effort to make a page that generic out of an LLM.
(idk if it's really declining or I simply haven't noticed it in a while)
ssh -p 443 -R0:localhost:443 tcp@free.pinggy.io
Disclosure: Co-founder of pinggy.io here.
Edit: I meant TCP tunnels, UDP tunnels, or also TLS tunnels for end-to-end encryption.
You can get the address with an API call.. but we charge for convenience. Pays the infra bills.
Also, the _main_ use case of `cloudflared` tunneling is using it as a long-term way to host production websites on your own hostname. the ability to create ad-hoc tunnels is more of a gimmick / advertising opportunity.
0: https://github.com/judge2020/cloudflare-connectivity-test/wi...
Also the lifetime I need the connection open. For something quick, ssh tunnel. For something normies use, reverse proxy. Ain’t trying to teach my parents about IP addresses and port numbers.
https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling
I have played around with frp, bore and ngrok.
[1]: https://dntls.substack.com/p/the-new-internet
They can monitor extreme outliers. It’s not an issue for them.
But again my point applies - the chances they get enough people using it that it becomes a meaningfully worse security target than lots of other existing things seems … super low.
It’s a big world, people make many choices I can’t understand (nix? Haskell? Php? <flame wars to /dev/null>). Even if this product nailed it - the number of people who can use it is minuscule - yes even as we add Claude-enabled PMs to the software dev ranks.
Alt view with the old saying - “put all your eggs in one basket … and watch that basket!”
I bet these new tunnels end up being a fraction of a percentage point of their network traffic.
I've migrated many companies off of cloudflare, usually because they end up pissing off companies when a contract renewal comes up and they slam them with massively increased bills and almost useless support if you aren't very high paying enterprise. I don't know how many CF support tickets I've just given up on over the last 15 years, usually related to their admin page, workers or some weird thing their system does that wasn't documented and I just stop getting responses and definitely don't get fixes.
If you ever worked in webhosting the Cloudflare wordpress/etc extensions are everywhere and back when I did work in hosting tons of support tickets were made because of CF. Could be way better now, I don't go near that industry these days.
The casual CF user sticking it in front of a blog they rarely look at and the business forced CF user has a very different experience. I cringe and seriously consider if I'm interviewing for an infra role and they use cloudflare. Usually it's startups that grew into larger businesses.
“The substrate itself consists of a few systems…”
I doubt that this is how wordy your communication is.
“It consists of a few systems” would be adequate. And if we had prior context about what else exists that surrounds “the substrate” the “substrate itself” distinction would be meaningful, but it’s not, because you are referring to one object, which is the system you built, and I doubt any enzymes act on it, so it’s likely not a substrate.
I'm not trusting any of these corporates any more
existing (slow) tunnels you can create once you've set up your own domain for cloudflare to manage its DNS, installing cloudflare software, logging in to your account, and running a similar command.
edit: my bad, quick ones aren't new at all
https://blog.cloudflare.com/quick-tunnels-anytime-anywhere/
we removed anonymous usage of our product many years ago because it was far and away the largest source of abuse on our entire platform.
i believe at this point that that anonymous, account-less tunneling services like this are net negative for the security of the internet
happy to answer any questions from the community
ssh -p 443 -R0:localhost:9051 free.pinggy.io
(Free for 1h each session)
ssh -R 0.0.0.0:80:localhost:9051 myserver
Make sure server sshd config has: GatewayPorts yes
- Co-founder of Pinggy.
The vps runs a custom image that is 2.54 Megabytes. It has a custom kernel with almost everything but networking and wireguard disabled, a fixed-size fs with pre-allocated blocks and inodes to hold the vps wireguard key, and a single pid 1 binary that calls the kernel directly to set up the routing rules, generate a new wireguard key on first boot and save it to the fs, print out the wireguard public key to the console, and loops reap. Updating involves building and uploading a new image, assigning the vps to use it, reboot, wait for the public key in the console then set it on the nas so they can talk.
It’s interesting that 10 (more?) years later the product has not evolved and, apparently, hasn’t found a way to finance itself without removing the pure free tunneling option.
I also think it seems cloudflare enter into a stage keep adding products and make the portal looks like a maze to get more advanced features configured
Do you still remember cloudflare mesh and use and stick to it?
Don't pass -d, your tunnel URL prints in the console and you can download dirs as tarball.
Thought it was very cool
While testing it locally Codex by itself suggests using CF Tunnels but what's more interesting it actually used the Quick Tunnels.
Coming from days where I get warnings of vibe-coded generated code using deprecated code or older APIs, I must say using something so fresh is quite impressive.
It was pretty easy to setup… but I cheated, and use Dokploy which handled most of it AFAICT
[1]: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/networks/co...
> Free, secure tunnel for everything you are building.
> Preview and ship ideas globally in seconds with Quick Tunnels. Deploy your local application to the Internet with a single command.
Clicking through Explore Cloudflare Tunnel leads us to:
> Looking to expose public applications? This documentation covers Cloudflare Tunnel use cases for private networking and Zero Trust, like VPN replacement and private network access. For publishing public web applications, APIs, and services to the Internet through Cloudflare refer to ...
Mullvad themselves already turned off port forwarding because people were using it to host child pornography. This is like Mullvad's port forwarding, but free.
and they also provide web hosting..
Sigh... HN littered with it these days.
then just use Cloudflare tunnels to connect to the laptop.
One caveat - there is an option to inject Javascript into your pages for traffic measurement which is ON BY DEFAULT, you have to go to "Web Analytics" and turn this off if you don't want it!
* https://cmacleod.me.uk & https://newsgrouper.org
something like - "We help you put localhost on the Internet."
What could possibly go wrong?
Also, the “0 ports opened” marketing is misleading. It still binds to a port and then also lets people access your resources over it.
I dislike that Cloudflare Engineering has become more… marketingy as of late. Also with their Cloudflare OS misnomer. Their products used to make more sense, what happened?
The other use case for webhooks is ok, but is exactly what ngrok already does since forever with a pretty high free quota.
Can someone chime in here?
It does the exact same thing, except supported by a global network of volunteers around the world.
Sure, you get some latency, but this is actually ideal for testing. You should know how your service operates in non optimal lightning fast conditions.
The obvious difference (and thus massive advantage) of the cloudfare product is that it is accessible over the normal internet without needing to install a tor client.
I'm sure that works for some subset of the population where all potential users are already comfortable using Tor; but imagine trying to share your PoC website with the designer/client and you are asking them to install Tor browser.
Is different than sharing your work with a client.
I personally wouldnt make it SOP to utilize a complely free service like this to share my work. I'm not saying it's not convient, it definitely is.
But you shouldn't subject a clients product to terms they probably aren't aware of.
> Free tunnels are meant to be used for testing and development, not for deploying a production website.
[0: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/networks/co...
My initial thought was desktops generally run 24/7, with laptops running when in use. At least for the customer at the market intersection for this type of product.
vibe coded app with may be no security and now available from the internet for anyone to RCE into my laptop?
I used to use a service called ngrok for this, but it's nice that Cloudflare is offering one now.
Hmm, Tailscale is too convenient and that traffic is going dark from Cloudflare's all seeing eye.
I think that rule is more of a "we reserve the right to..." rule, but it makes me sad because I'd rather not open up ports on my router to expose my Jellyfin to my parents.
This type of quality downgrade is scary, and it's everywhere now.
- find my approximate physical location
- regularly scan ports on my IP and wait for me to accidentally expose a service I didn't mean to
- track me in any access logs they have access to