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Building a Discord Bot to Explore the Tailscale API

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By Rhys McQueen
2 min read
Building a Discord Bot to Explore the Tailscale API

Why I Built This Project

I wanted to dive deeper into the Tailscale API and understand its capabilities while finding practical ways to interact with my Tailscale network. Rather than passively reading through documentation, I decided to create something interactive: a Discord bot that could query and display Tailscale network information. This hands-on approach not only made the learning process engaging but also resulted in a functional tool for network management.

What This Bot Does

The Tailscale Discord Bot provides a suite of commands to query and manage network devices, users, and tags directly from a Discord server. It’s perfect for experimenting with the Tailscale API while creating practical integrations.

Key Features:

  1. List Active Devices: Quickly fetch and display devices active in the last 5 minutes.
    Active Devices

  2. Device Details: Retrieve detailed information about specific devices, including hostname, IP addresses, operating system, and tags.
    Device Details

  3. Filter by Tags: Find devices in your network based on a specific tag.
    Filter Devices

  4. List Tags: Display all tags currently in use within your Tailscale network.
    List Tags

  5. List Users: Get a summary of all users connected to the network.
    List Users

  6. Network Status: View an overview of your Tailscale network, including total and active device counts.
    Network Status

Learning Outcomes

This project helped me:

  • Gain hands-on experience with the Tailscale API.
  • Understand the structure of network data, such as devices, tags, and users.
  • Experiment with Python’s Nextcord library to build Discord bots.
  • Create interactive slash commands for better user experience.

How It Works

The bot connects to the Tailscale API using an API token and provides information through Discord slash commands. Here’s a high-level flow:

  1. The user interacts with the bot using slash commands in Discord.
  2. The bot queries the Tailscale API for the requested data.
  3. The response is formatted and displayed in Discord.

Challenges and Discoveries

One of the main challenges was parsing and filtering data from the Tailscale API to fit real-time use cases. For example, determining “active devices” required calculating timestamps against the current time. Additionally, I explored features like autocomplete for device names, which was a fun addition to improve usability.

Final Thoughts

Building this bot was a rewarding way to learn the Tailscale API while creating something functional and interactive. I now have a better understanding of how to work with Tailscale’s data and can extend this bot to include more advanced features like managing ACLs or triggering network events.

If you’re looking to explore the Tailscale API, I highly recommend taking on a similar project to learn through experimentation. You can find the full code and setup instructions on GitHub.

This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.