was kicking the virtual weeds on the interwebz and stumbled on sniffnet and saw it mentions you can install it from the official Tiny Core Linux repository.
https://github.com/GyulyVGC/sniffnet/wiki/Alternative-installation-methodsand so naturally:
grabbed usb thumbdrive with tcl16.1(tinycorepure64)
booted up in the closest machine(lenovo y580)
downloaded and loaded sniffnet via app browser
and a "sudo -E sniffnet" fails with various complaints
for sniffnet, the app browser information doesn't give gtk3 as a dependency but the github seems to...
https://github.com/GyulyVGC/sniffnet/wiki/Required-dependenciesso a quick tce-load -wi gtk3.tcz and now there are less complaints
my assumption is that updating/upgrading/etc the necessary *.tcz/etc will allow the installation procedure related at the above github url to achieve complete success
fyi, yes i know i have failed to give all the gory details(honestly this was all the energy i could afford to expend)
(profuse apologies in advance of any fire/flames/smoke/etc)