What are you trying to do?

I would like App Shortcuts to enable and disable the Tailscale VPN. These can be triggered by long-pressing the app icon.

There are other places these app shortcuts can be useful, for example, on Samsung phones, you can trigger app shortcuts from built-in "Routines" functionality (formally Bixby Routines).

How should we solve this?

There's not much ambiguity to define; you can declare <shortcuts xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"></shortcuts>. I’d like one that enables the VPN, the same as the toggle in the app, and another that disables it. Preferably, the app wouldn't need to launch any UI to execute these actions, which I believe is possible.

What is the impact of not solving this?

It requires more taps to enable and disable Tailscale, also automating connecting and disconnecting remains quite expert.

There are intents for disabling and enabling the VPN, which you can automate with something like Tasker, but that's a much higher, nerdier bar than Samsung’s Routines or other apps that utilise "App Shortcuts".

Anything else?