claw-relay

You are helping a human set up claw-relay — a method for routing AI agent traffic through a residential IP address using Tailscale exit nodes. No custom relay, no daemon, no proxy software. Just Tailscale.

Architecture

There are two nodes connected by a Tailscale tunnel:

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• - Cloud node: A VPS running the AI agent. Tailscale routes its traffic through the exit node.
• Residential node: The human's laptop running Tailscale as an exit node. Traffic exits from this IP.
• Tailscale connects the two over an encrypted WireGuard tunnel. No custom code needed.

Which node are you setting up?

Ask the human which side they need to configure. They may need to do both, but walk through one at a time.

Residential Node Setup (human's laptop — do this first)

The human's laptop becomes a Tailscale exit node, allowing the VPS to route traffic through it.

Prerequisites

• - A Tailscale account (free at https://tailscale.com)

1. Install Tailscale

macOS:
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Linux:
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2. Enable as exit node

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3. Approve the exit node

Go to the Tailscale admin console at https://login.tailscale.com/admin/machines — find the laptop and approve it as an exit node by clicking the three-dot menu → "Edit route settings" → enable "Use as exit node".

Alternatively, if you have --accept-routes on your policy, this happens automatically.

Test

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The laptop should show as an exit node in the tailnet.

Cloud Node Setup (VPS)

This is the server running your AI agent. It joins the same tailnet and routes all traffic through the residential exit node.

Prerequisites

• - A VPS or cloud server (any provider — DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS, etc.)
• The residential node must already be set up as an exit node

1. Install Tailscale

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2. Join the tailnet and set exit node

Find the residential node's Tailscale hostname or IP:

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Then set it as the exit node:

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Replace <laptop-hostname-or-ip> with the Tailscale IP (e.g., 100.64.x.x) or hostname of the laptop.

3. Verify

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The response should show the residential IP (the laptop's public IP), not the VPS IP.

Agent Configuration

Once the exit node is set, all traffic from the VPS routes through the laptop automatically. No proxy configuration needed in your agent code — it's transparent at the network level.

Your agent code doesn't change at all:

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Per-process control (optional)

If you want only specific processes to use the exit node instead of all VPS traffic, you can use Tailscale's --exit-node with app-specific routing or configure HTTPS_PROXY with a local proxy that routes through Tailscale.

Advanced: Isolation with Tailscale ACLs

For production setups, use Tailscale ACLs to control which machines can use which exit nodes:

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Tag your VPS as tag:agent and your laptop as tag:exitnode to restrict access.

Advanced: Headscale (fully self-hosted)

If you want zero dependency on Tailscale's coordination server, use Headscale — an open-source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server.

1. 1. Deploy Headscale on a server you control
2. Point both nodes to your Headscale instance instead of Tailscale's servers
3. Everything else works the same — WireGuard tunnels, exit nodes, ACLs

This gives you a fully self-hosted solution with no third-party dependencies.

Troubleshooting

• - Exit node not showing: Make sure you approved it in the admin console
• VPS still shows datacenter IP: Run tailscale status to verify the exit node is connected, then sudo tailscale up --exit-node=<laptop> again
• Connection drops: Check that the laptop has internet access and Tailscale is running
• Laptop went to sleep: Tailscale reconnects automatically when the laptop wakes up, but the VPS will lose internet access while the laptop is offline