--- title: "Better Databases, Railway MCP Server, Hackathon winners" date: 2025-08-15 number: 0251 url: https://railway.com/changelog/2025-08-15-better-databases --- # Better Databases, Railway MCP Server, Hackathon winners Between [AI nuking databases](https://x.com/adxtya_jha/status/1955997840398016638) and [developers drowning in configs](https://x.com/shadcn/status/1955254151807635602), it’s been anything but calm this week. Perfect timing, then, to roll out something new. Amid the chaos, we’ve been quietly putting together the first version of the [**official Railway MCP Server™**](https://github.com/railwayapp/railway-mcp-server). We teased it last week, and now it’s here. Yes, yes we know it can feel like — *“just one more MCP server, bro. I swear this one’s different.”* But in all honesty, we think you’ll like what it can do. More on that below. In other big news: the [Railway Hackathon](https://railway.com/hackathon)[ ](https://railway.com/hackathon)has wrapped and [the winners have been announced](https://blog.railway.com/p/hackathon-2025-winners). We’ve got the full breakdown further down — and trust us, there’s some seriously cool stuff in there. Now, let’s dive into what shipped this week! ## Next Stop: Better Databases [Video: Databases on the Railway ] Databases are first-class citizens on Railway, and we want them to deliver the same *oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-it-was-this-easy* experience you get everywhere else on the platform. The zero-to-one experience already delivers: you can [one-click deploy many databases](https://railway.com/deploy?category=Storage) from the template marketplace. Now we’re shifting our focus to what happens *after* that first setup. We're hardening databases on Railway so they’re more reliable and scalable out-of-the-box. You’ll get more opinionated workflows while needing less database-specific knowledge, letting you focus on shipping your apps. Our goal is that you never need to look beyond Railway when building your app, database included. We’ve been shipping improvements to make managing your databases just as seamless as creating them. Here’s a quick look at the latest updates for databases and volumes — and a preview of what’s next. - You can now pick a mount path from a volume's history. This way you don't have to type it out and risk making a mistake - We improved the volume name generator to make volume names more clear like `redis-volume` rather than `foobar-volume` - We made the restore backups button a lot less scary - For [Priority Boarding](https://railway.com/account/feature-flags), you can now: - Manage Postgres Extensions - Reset your database credentials You can try out all of these updates by going to [dev.new](http://dev.new/) and deploying a database. Coming soon: - Automatic minor/patch version upgrades for your database - UI updates to simplify the experience We’d* love *your feedback on your experience with databases on Railway. You can drop your suggestions and issues [in Central Station](https://station.railway.com/). ## Official Railway MCP Server [Video: The Railway MCP server in action] The [official Railway MCP Server](https://github.com/railwayapp/railway-mcp-server)™ is now live.** **Although it's still early and highly experimental, it's ready for you to start using. You can have your coding agent spin up a project, attach a domain, search and deploy a template, or pull logs from a running service without leaving your editor. By design the MCP server doesn’t include any destructive actions, so you shouldn’t worry about your project resources suddenly disappearing. We also strongly recommend that you try out the MCP server in an isolated environment. This is the initial release. We’re curious which workflows and features you’d want next, and what’s missing from your day-to-day MCP setup. Share your thoughts in [Central Station](https://station.railway.com/). In the coming weeks, we’ll do a deep dive into how it’s built and share some behind-the-scenes (including a few moments where it felt like things wouldn’t work at all). If you run into trouble,[ Mahmoud’s your guy](https://x.com/thisismahmoud_). He’s the one who built this project. ## Announcing the Railway Hackathon Winners [Video: Railway Hackathon winners announced] The first ever [**Railway User Hackathon**](https://railway.com/hackathon) is officially in the books — and wow, did the community deliver. There were two categories: **Project Complexity** which is all about ambitious builds, and **Content Depth**, which was all about teaching and sharing. **Winners: Project Complexity** 1️⃣ 1st place: [Switchyard, an autoscaling infrastructure platform](http://railway.com/deploy/switchyard) 2️⃣ 2nd place: [Rundown, an AI-first RSS reader](http://railway.com/deploy/rundown-1) 3️⃣ 3rd place: [Pushflow, a web push notification management system](http://railway.com/deploy/pushflow) **Winners: Content Depth** 1️⃣ 1st place: [Remotion, a video generation server guide](https://dev.to/aeither/remotion-railway-quickstart-1787) 2️⃣ 2nd place: [Railway + Terminus, an e-ink dashboard for deployments](https://www.mikayla.codes/railway-terminus) 3️⃣ 3rd place: [Mosaic, a knowledge management system](https://techmumus.substack.com/publish/post/170645947) And of course, there were several [honorable mentions](https://blog.railway.com/p/hackathon-2025-winners) across both categories. Beyond the winners, **58 brand-new templates** came out of the hackathon. You can explore the community’s favorites in the [Help Station voting thread](https://station.railway.com/questions/vote-for-your-favorite-hackathon-sub-ac89e07d) — and maybe start thinking about what you’ll build for the next one. ## Fixes and Improvements - We improved the shared variables experience by enabling you to copy a configuration from one shared variable to others - We improved the Railway GitHub PR bot to support multiple projects linking to the same PR. Previously, each project would overwrite the last project's PR comment update, but now the bot will happily merge updates and show all of them in one comment. This significantly improves the experience of working with monorepos linked to multiple projects - We improved `railway init` by adding a `--workspace` flag, allowing you to create a project non-interactively from the CLI, which is especially useful in CI environments