Here I explain how to deploy your code using GitHub Actions and Ansible with Tailscale VPN. I assume your workstation runs Linux or MacOS, your server runs Ubuntu/Debian or derivative and you have already installed Tailscale.

1. Open your Github repo secrets page: Settings > Secrets and Variables > Actions.

2. Create Tailscale tag: at https://login.tailscale.com/admin/acls/file add "tag:ci": [...], to tagOwners section.

3. Create Oauth secret at Tailscale control panel: go to https://login.tailscale.com/admin/settings/oauth, click "Generate OAuth client", check both "Read" and "Write" for Auth Keys and select tag:ci. Copy newly created client ID and secret to Github secrets TS_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID and TS_OAUTH_SECRET, respectively.

4. Create deploy SSH key, then create Github secret named DEPLOY_SSH_KEY with the contents of ~/.ssh/github-deploy file:

ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/github-deploy

1. Create server user for deploy:

sudo useradd -m deploy
sudo mkdir -p /home/deploy/.ssh
sudo nano /home/deploy/.ssh/authorized_keys # and paste the contents of ~/.ssh/github-deploy.pub
sudo chmod 600 /home/deploy/.ssh/authorized_keys
sudo chmod 700 /home/deploy/.ssh

From now on your commits to the main branch will trigger the deploy.