Railway Deployment

Prerequisites

A Railway account
The Railway CLI installed
Your Vane repository on GitHub (or deploy directly from the CLI)

Step 1: Create a new Railway project

railway login
railway init
# Select "Empty Project"

Step 2: Add a PostgreSQL database

From the Railway dashboard: New Service → Database → PostgreSQL. Railway provisions the database and sets DATABASE_URL in the same project environment automatically. Or via CLI:

railway add --plugin postgresql

Step 3: Set environment variables

Required:

railway variables set VANE_MASTER_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32)

Optional but recommended:

railway variables set LOG_LEVEL=info
railway variables set SPIFFE_TRUST_DOMAIN=vane.build
railway variables set VANE_BASE_URL=https://$(railway domain)

If you have a Sentry project:

railway variables set SENTRY_DSN=https://key@o1234.ingest.sentry.io/5678

Step 4: Deploy

From your local Vane repository:

railway up

Railway detects the package.json start script and runs node dist/api/server.js. You need to run the TypeScript build first:

npm run build
railway up

Or configure Railway to build and start: In railway.toml (create at repo root):

[build]
builder = "NIXPACKS"
buildCommand = "npm ci && npm run build"

[deploy]
startCommand = "npm start"
healthcheckPath = "/v1/health"
healthcheckTimeout = 10

Step 5: Verify

RAILWAY_URL=$(railway domain)

# Health check
curl https://$RAILWAY_URL/v1/health
# { "status": "ok" }

# Register your first company
curl -s -X POST https://$RAILWAY_URL/v1/companies \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "companyId": "acme" }' | jq .

Environment variable reference

Railway sets DATABASE_URL automatically when a PostgreSQL plugin is added. All other variables must be set manually.

Variable	Source	Notes
`DATABASE_URL`	Railway (automatic)	Set when PostgreSQL plugin is added.
`PORT`	Railway (automatic)	Railway injects `PORT` automatically — do not set this manually.
`VANE_MASTER_KEY`	You	Generate with `openssl rand -hex 32`.
`VANE_BASE_URL`	You	Set to your Railway domain, e.g., `https://my-vane.up.railway.app`.
`SPIFFE_TRUST_DOMAIN`	You	Optional. Defaults to `vane.local`.
`LOG_LEVEL`	You	Optional. Defaults to `info`.
`SENTRY_DSN`	You	Optional.

Custom domains

In the Railway dashboard: Settings → Domains → Add Domain. After adding your custom domain, update VANE_BASE_URL:

railway variables set VANE_BASE_URL=https://vane.yourdomain.com

Scaling

Railway scales horizontally. If you run multiple replicas, note that:

Rate limiting is per-process (in-memory). With multiple replicas, the effective limit is N × per-process limit. Add a shared rate limiter (Redis + ioredis-rate-limiter) for cluster-wide limits.
The in-memory attestation chain per tenant is fully loaded on each replica startup. This is fine for development but becomes expensive at scale — each replica holds the full chain in memory.
DATABASE_URL is shared across replicas. PostgreSQL handles concurrent writes correctly.

Getting Started

API Reference

SDK & Integrations

Security

Deployment

Railway Deployment

Prerequisites

Step 1: Create a new Railway project

Step 2: Add a PostgreSQL database

Step 3: Set environment variables

Step 4: Deploy

Step 5: Verify

Environment variable reference

Custom domains

Scaling

​Prerequisites

​Step 1: Create a new Railway project

​Step 2: Add a PostgreSQL database

​Step 3: Set environment variables

​Step 4: Deploy

​Step 5: Verify

​Environment variable reference

​Custom domains

​Scaling

Prerequisites

Step 1: Create a new Railway project

Step 2: Add a PostgreSQL database

Step 3: Set environment variables

Step 4: Deploy

Step 5: Verify

Environment variable reference

Custom domains

Scaling