Just remember that abducted robot cops can sometimes remember their past even if you erase their memories. But good luck on your new project

I often relieve my on fires I've started

I don’t have a static IP at home

Host on your home server with a Cloudflare tunnel. Cloudflare has a free tier that would suit your needs. It doesn't rely on static IP addresses, deals with all of the ssh certs, and won't expose your home IP address from incoming requests.

I don’t want to expose it to the internet

The backend workers make requests to other servers which would expose the IP address of those requests. You could use a VPN for the backend workers to protect those requests. But it's this really a concern? What risk vector are you protecting yourself from? Don't rely on security by obscurity. And even if a bad actor did get your IP address, you could just reboot your home router and get a new one.

I think you're over engineering a solution for unlikely risk vectors.

And why would I even need Tailscale?

If you were using a hybrid approach you would need a solid networking solution between your VPS and home server. Tailscale makes that easy. The shared resources like reddis, postgres, S3 hosting, etc can all be on servers running Tailscale and will appear as local servers. You can solve this with your own VPN but Tailscale is solid and deals with non static IP addresses.

Tl;Dr, host at home, use Cloudflare, and don't worry about using a VPS (unless you need a high level of up time and have flaky Internet or power at home).

There are tutorials for setting up Mastodon, docker, and Tailscale. Do you have any specific questions?

And why didn't you run everything from your home server?

I have a hybrid hosting approach. I'm running the web workers, reddis, and postgres on a vps and then running the background workers on a server in my basement. I use Tailscale to connect them

He's cosplaying as a beagle

This is clearly AI. That baby goat is obviously a terminator sent from the future to assist particular humans in destroying humanity.

https://www.elonowesyou100dollars.com

The sub's implosion was probably Clippy's fault

Well it hasn't been hammer time since the 90s

you could safely jump in the water and swim with them!

But I can't swim