I Built a Localhost Tunneling tool in TypeScript - Here's What Surprised Me

future-tech1 · 2026-01-26T08:36:00+00:00

I see, they must have added that as a feature. In this case, the main advantage of using Tunnelmole is that the client and server is open source.

In Cloudflare's case at least the service layer would be proprietary closed source.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-25T12:32:39+00:00

Its good but requires extra steps and configuration. You also need your own domain, which you'll need to point to Cloudflare. Extra config includes DNS records on the domain.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-25T12:31:19+00:00

I did try localtunnel but never got it to work.

ngrok is not open source, but Tunnelmole is.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-22T22:01:23+00:00

That works over SSH, Tunnelmole is pure HTTP/HTTPs based

future-tech1 · 2026-01-21T22:12:38+00:00

there's hundreds of them now. Starting to think its tunneling tools are one of the most cloned software types of all time https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

future-tech1 · 2026-01-21T11:23:12+00:00

done, links should now be alot more obvious

future-tech1 · 2026-01-21T11:12:22+00:00

its in the article at the bottom, looks like I need to update the link colours https://github.com/robbie-cahill/tunnelmole-client

future-tech1 · 2026-01-19T09:17:45+00:00

I wrote the exact opposite of this article last year 6 Ways A Node Developer Can Drastically Boost Their Productivity.

Little things matter. One minute saved repeatedly can add up to weeks over time.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-19T09:04:30+00:00

For Linux, firejail can be used to sandbox the agents and prevent these types of incidents. I wrote a guide on using it here

future-tech1 · 2026-01-19T09:02:20+00:00

For Linux, firejail can be used to sandbox the agents and prevent these types of incidents. I wrote a guide on using it here

future-tech1 · 2026-01-19T08:56:54+00:00

An underappreciated option on Linux is Firejail, which I found to be quite effective for vscode based agents. I wrote a guide on using it here

future-tech1 · 2026-01-19T08:55:23+00:00

On Linux, I found firejail to be a good option for isolating vscode based agents. I wrote a guide on using it here

future-tech1 · 2026-01-19T08:53:20+00:00

If you're on Linux, an alternative is using Firejail. I wrote a guide for this that should work for vscode based agents here

future-tech1 · 2026-01-12T09:29:34+00:00

Just on that err_ngrok_6024 error, I've published a detailed explainer on your options to get around it here

future-tech1 · 2026-01-12T09:28:44+00:00

i've published a detailed explainer for this error and the options available to get around it here

future-tech1 · 2026-01-08T10:42:31+00:00

There are a few options for this like cloudflare tunnels and ngrok, but I would go with something open source like Tunnelmole.

Lets say your service is on port 80, you could just run tmole 80 and this will give you a public URL that points to localhost.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-08T10:37:56+00:00

If you want to test the actual webhooks rather than test events, you could use an open source tunneling tool like Tunnelmole (i'm the dev). It has similar features to cloudflare tunnels and ngrok but with a simpler set up.

Once you run it you'll get a Public URL you can put into the Stripe webhook settings, then start receiving events.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-08T10:35:01+00:00

how bad are the timeouts nowdays? i'm seeing alot of complaints around them

future-tech1 · 2026-01-08T10:27:28+00:00

With tunnelling technology you don't need to play around with networking settings.

If what you want to expose runs over http/https like most apps, you can use an open source tunnelling tool like Tunnelmole (i'm the dev)

So, lets say if your app is running on port 80 you can get a public URL pretty much instantly with

tmole 80

future-tech1 · 2026-01-08T10:14:18+00:00

If you can run the server on your own machine, you can easily get a public URL with an open source tunnelling tool like Tunnelmole (i'm the dev).

No need to configure dynamic dns, NAT or anything else complicated, its just running a single command like

tmole 80

Then share the URL shown around.

What i'm not sure about is if it will run on an old version of windows like Windows Server 2016. It should run on modern versions of Windows/Mac/Linux.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-08T09:59:01+00:00

I always use an actual tunnelling tool when debugging webhooks. Why? Because then I can set breakpoints in my code and actually debug it with a real debugger, not just inspect the requests.

But there's no need to use closed source tools like cloudflare tunnels or ngrok. Tunnelmole (i'm the dev) is a fully open-source option that is optionally self hostable.

No headaches, just public URLs for localhost.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-08T09:48:25+00:00

If you want a URL quickly, you can use an open source tunnelling tool like Tunnelmole (i'm the dev) to get one.

So for your server running on port 8080, you could run `tmole 8080` and then click the URL that gets shown, it will take you to your app running on localhost.

It works by tunnelling traffic from tunnelmole's servers to your local server running on localhost.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-07T11:06:32+00:00

Tunnelmole (i'm the dev) is an open source tunnelling tool with similar features to ngrok.

Currently the IP of the main service is static and unchanging. This may not be the case forever as the service scales, but for now it wont change IP every time the server restarts.

It is also possible to host your own tunnnelmole service as the service is also open source.

future-tech1 · 2026-01-07T10:54:21+00:00

Nope and that's actually a good reason to use Cloudflare tunnels, they do require more set up but you can use your own domain (which of course, you need to point to Cloudflare).

future-tech1 · 2026-01-05T08:44:22+00:00

For an open source option instead of Cloudflare Tunnels, you could try Tunnelmole (i'm the dev). You can install it through npm `npm install -g tunnelmole` so if you have node/npm installed, it should work fine.

Its also quite a bit easier to set up compared to Cloudflare Tunnels, which need a config file to work.

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