A TUI for Ersilia's Tailnet

A terminal dashboard to see, open, and keep awake tmux sessions across every machine on Ersilia's Tailscale tailnet — over Tailscale SSH, from one screen.

Built for Ersilia, where work is spread across shared laptops, workstations, and servers on a private tailnet.

Requirements

• tmux (required — tuimux is a front-end for it), plus ssh, tailscale, and a terminal.
• Python ≥ 3.9.

Install

pip install git+https://github.com/ersilia-os/tuimux

Usage

tuimux                              # the dashboard — all you normally need
tuimux attach [name]                # put this terminal into a tmux session (attach or create)
tuimux detach                       # detach this terminal; the session keeps running
tuimux autostart on|off|status      # auto-tmux every new local terminal
tuimux mouse on|off|status          # tmux mouse mode (wheel scrolls the pane)
tuimux login [host user[,user…]]    # show/set the SSH user(s) per host
tuimux devices                      # list every device in the tailnet
tuimux doctor                       # check your setup

Open, rename, detach, close, and keep-awake all happen inside the dashboard. The footer lists the keys, and a live preview of the highlighted session shows under the table.

Setup conventions

tuimux assumes a small, consistent tailnet. The simplest way to have everything work from the start:

• Enable Tailscale SSH on every computer — sudo tailscale up --ssh. Phones and tablets are status-only (never SSH'd).
• Use the same SSH username (and password) on all machines. tuimux logs in as your local $USER by default, so a consistent username makes every box reachable with no per-host setup. Override per host with tuimux login when needed.
• Give each device a tailnet name matching its hostname, so the dashboard names line up with the machines.
• Tag shared machines that several people log into with tag:dev — the Tailscale ACL tag we use for inbound multi-user access.

About the Ersilia Open Source Initiative

The Ersilia Open Source Initiative is a tech non-profit with the mission to equip laboratories universities, and clinics in the Global South with AI/ML tools for infectious and neglected tropical disease research.

tuimux is internal tooling we built to work comfortably across our shared machines, shared here in case it helps others too.