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If Agent Canvas is running on your computer, you can access it from a phone, tablet, or another device without exposing it to the public internet. Tailscale creates a private network between your devices. No port forwarding, DNS, or firewall rules are required.

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Setup

  1. Install Tailscale on both your computer and your phone or tablet.
  2. Sign in with the same account on both devices.
  3. Find your computer’s Tailscale IP in the Tailscale app. It usually looks like 100.x.y.z.
  4. Start Agent Canvas on your computer: 
    agent-canvas
  5. Open http://<tailscale-ip>:8000/ in your phone or tablet browser.
That’s it. The connection is encrypted and only devices in your Tailscale network can reach it.
If the mobile browser still points at 127.0.0.1 or localhost, open Manage Backends and edit the local backend’s Host / Base URL to http://<tailscale-ip>:8000. If it keeps reverting, clear site data for the Agent Canvas URL in your browser settings and reload the page.

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ngrok (Remote / Public Access)

Use ngrok when Tailscale is not an option or when you need a temporary public URL. Because the URL is reachable from the internet, run Agent Canvas in public mode with a strong backend API key first: 
export LOCAL_BACKEND_API_KEY="<choose-a-strong-secret>"
agent-canvas --public
Then start ngrok in a second terminal: 
ngrok http 8000
Open the ngrok forwarding URL in your phone or tablet browser.
Do not expose Agent Canvas over the internet without authentication. Public mode requires users to enter LOCAL_BACKEND_API_KEY before the backend can be used. Without authentication, anyone with the URL can use your instance and the LLM API keys configured in it. See VM / Self-Hosted Backend for the full remote-access setup.
ngrok also supports OAuth, IP allowlists, and other access controls for additional protection.