Comment by frenchtoast8
6 hours ago
I'm not understanding how this supports Tailscale's initiatives and mission. That isn't to say this isn't a useful feature for a business, but it feels like a random grasp at "build something, anything, AI related." As a paying customer I'm concerned about the company's focus being blurred when there are 3.8k open issues on their Github repo and my company has been tracking some particular issues for years without progress.
Corporate/enterprise networks have nightmarish setups for centralizing access to LLMs. This seems like an extremely natural direction for Tailscale; it is to LLM interfaces what Tailscale itself was to VPNs, a drastically simplified system that, by making policy legible, actually allows security teams to do the access control that was mostly aspirational under the status quo ante.
Seems straightforward?
I think if you don't have friends working at e.g. big banks or whatever, you might not grok just how nutty it is to try to run simple agent workflows.
>Corporate/enterprise networks have nightmarish setups for centralizing access to LLMs.
As someone who is on the other side of the fence on this and trying to keep the network secure and preventing data exfiltration there could be a good reason for this. More often than not we have folks doing all kinds of crazy things and ignore what’s in the handbook. For example we had someone who didn’t like MFA for remote access and would use Tailscale to have a remote permanent reverse proxy to their homelab to do whatever work they were doing. What’s funny is that we are not BOFH’s and would have helped them setup whatever they need had they just sent us an email or opened a ticket.
The whole Tailscale ethos is exactly what you're talking about:
* Security/risk teams have coherent, sensible goals for managing access
* The technology stack they've landed on makes those goals performative; so complicated that they can't even express their most important goals, so annoying that users route around it
* What's needed is a radically simplified approach that centers end-user experience (particularly around onboarding).
I'm not saying banks are crazy to want to control LLM usage (I'm not bullish on it long-term either, but I see the issue), just that the systems I've talked to friends about them using today are batshit, ranging from "foundation lab shmoundation lab we'll just do our own models" to "OK you can operate in 2025 but only in a Citrix terminal".
Yeah I think it's better to think of Tailscale as an access control company which is utilizing networks as the utility vector, not a network utility company that also has access controls.
Another reason they could have built this was by listening to their users. I do believe lots of people are spinning up agents in their workplaces, and managing yet another set of api keys is probably annoying for Tailscale's customers. This feels like a great solution to me.
Pressure to service larger customers to capture higher revenues is inevitable for Tailscale given the scale of VC funding, valuation, and operating costs involved.
Trying to be all things to all people will inevitably dilute focus, and it’s understandable that OP might be looking at this sub-product and wondering where the value is for their use cases.
They’re probably not the only ones questioning whether they’re still part of Tailscale’s core ICP (ideal customer profile), either.
Edit: expanded ICP for clarity.
yes this inevitably happens to companies that can't grow infinitely, you pivot to enterprise because you can sell to one person that has the equivalent spend of thousands... it really is unfortunate for the individuals
I have a secret manager, why would I want tails ale involved in the management of secrets, they are a networking company
Tails ale is not a company I see being involved in my core AI ops. I don't need their visibility tools, I already have LGTM.
Tailscale should focus on their core competency, not chase the gilded Ai hype cycle. I have sufficient complaints about their core product that this effort is a red flag for me. To do this now, instead of years ago, shows how behind the times they are
They're not a networking company, they're an access control company. Their original product is based around networking, and now this new one is based around AI access and metrics.
This product isn't about managing and distributing API keys, it's about managing and distributing access to these services throughout the org. In fact, it's more about being able to avoid managing and distributing API keys, which is IMHO even better.
Not to mention that storing the API keys on a developer machine (or distributing them to a developer machine) is the first step towards a developer's API keys getting leaked or exfiltrated. With this approach, the developer never has the API key on their machine at all (and you don't have to rotate or invalidate the key when they leave).
This ^^
There's a set of common needs across these gateways, and everyone is building their own proxies and reinventing the wheel, which just feels unnecessary.
~All of our customers at Oso (the launch partner in the article) have been asking us how to get a handle on this stuff...bc their CEO/board/whatever is asking them. So to us it was a no-brainer. (We're also Tailscale customers.)
I realised I wasn't Tailscale's target customer when I reported a 100% reproducible iOS bug/regression over a year ago. It was confirmed, logged, and forgotten.
There's actually a mass acquisition game going on right now in this space. Companies want to use genAI, but don't necessarily want to hire people to run their own models in-house. It may not be obvious to startup-y employees, but keeping data in-house is huge for big companies. LLM traffic is a lot different from established traffic that firewalls have been built up for. You can't block data leaks as easily as shutting down access to google drive. When you can't trust all of your employees, genAI presents a lot of new attack vectors.
In times of peace, the hardest part of running a military is keeping the troops busy.
This seems quite useful to me, especially for a larger org. If your dev's are working on LLM features, they'll need access to the OpenAI APIs. So are you just gonna give all of them a key? the same key?
No idea how this is solved at the moment, so seems like a smart step
A huge chunk of the open issues are feature requests with many of those already being implemented years ago but not yet marked closed. And a vast majority of the bugs are repeats, they clearly need someone to clean up their issue tracker.
Came to say this. It looks like a Mozilla move.
+1
I like tailscale itself but a lot of basic stuff (such as dynamic routing) or ephemeral node auth are very lacking, wish they would concentrate more on their core product we all like and want to see improve
> we all like
Building software users like doesn't make for a good business model. Especially if that model has to satisfy VC.
> my company has been tracking some particular issues for years without progress
Sounds like something your Account Manager or similar would need to work through. Development roadmaps are often driven by the largest, or loudest customers.