--- title: "Remote MCP, Railway Agent in the CLI, one-command skills install" date: 2026-04-17 number: 0286 url: https://railway.com/changelog/2026-04-17-remote-mcp --- # Remote MCP, Railway Agent in the CLI, one-command skills install If your agent can write the code, it should be able to ship it too. So this week, we laid three new tracks for it. The Railway Remote MCP Server is now live at [`mcp.railway.com`](https://mcp.railway.com/), ready for any MCP-compatible editor to plug into over OAuth. The CLI picks up a new `railway agent` command for driving Railway from a terminal, a script, or CI. And `railway skills` drops [Railway's agent skills](https://github.com/railwayapp/railway-skills) into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and OpenCode, so your coding agent shows up knowing how Railway works. We wrote a longer piece on why we're leaning into agents and where we're headed. [Read the full blog post](https://blog.railway.com/p/agent-rails-remote-mcp-cli). Let's get into it! 🚄 ## Railway Remote MCP server [Video: Connect the Railway remote MCP server to Claude Code] The Railway remote MCP server is live at [mcp.railway.com](http://mcp.railway.com/) and ready for public testing. Any MCP-compatible agent (Claude, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Droid, OpenCode, and others) can connect over OAuth and start driving Railway from the editor. Head to [mcp.railway.com](http://mcp.railway.com/) for click-to-copy snippets. Add one to your editor's MCP config, hit connect, and OAuth opens in your browser. You pick which workspaces and projects the client can access, and you can revoke it from Railway settings at any time. For Claude Code, the fastest path is: ```bash claude mcp add railway --transport http https://mcp.railway.com ``` Once connected, your client can: - List projects, services, and environments - Create new projects - Redeploy a service, or commit staged changes with `accept-deploy` (marked destructive, so the client prompts before running it). - Hand multi-step work off to `railway-agent`, which delegates to the same Railway agent that powers the dashboard. It's the natural-language escape hatch for things like "figure out why my backend service is crashing on deploy." The tool surface starts intentionally small (7 tools today) and leans on `railway-agent` for multi-step operations. A question like "debug my deploy" is one round-trip from your editor's perspective, with the full multi-step reasoning happening on our side, so the client's context stays cheap. We wrote a longer piece on the thinking behind the Remote MCP Server, including our tool-surface strategy and why `railway-agent` is the escape hatch for multi-step work. [Read the full blog post](https://blog.railway.com/p/agent-rails-remote-mcp-cli). You can also read the [Remote MCP Server docs](https://docs.railway.com/ai/remote-mcp-server), or share feedback in the [Central Station thread](https://station.railway.com/feedback/model-context-protocol-for-railway-railw-c040b796). ## Railway Agent in the CLI [Video: Railway Agent in the CLI] Not every workflow lives in an editor. Some live in a terminal, a script, or a CI job. `railway agent` is another surface on the Railway Agent you already use in the dashboard. Same agent, same tools, now reachable from wherever you work. ```bash # Add a Postgres database and wire it up railway agent -p "add a Postgres database to this project and set DATABASE_URL on the API service" # Investigate a failing service railway agent -p "help me figure out why my backend service is crashing on deploy" # Pipe it into your automation railway agent -p "list my services and their status" --json | jq '.toolCalls' ``` A few things it's good at on day one: - Interactive back-and-forth with bare `railway agent`. - One-shot prompts with `-p` for scripts and quick questions. - `--json` output that includes the thread ID and every tool call, for chaining into automation. - `--thread-id` to resume a previous conversation. - `--service` and `--environment` to scope a request to a specific target. It's scoped to your user token, so it can do anything you can do and nothing more. That makes it a clean fit for CI, where it can investigate a failing deploy or spin up a database without extra credentials. Run `railway upgrade` to pick it up, check out the [`railway agent`](https://docs.railway.com/cli/agent)[ docs](https://docs.railway.com/cli/agent), and share feedback on [Central Station](https://station.railway.com/new?type=feedback). ## **One-command Railway skills install** [Image: One-command skills install] An agent is only as sharp as the instructions it has about the platform it's working with. `railway skills install` drops Railway's curated agent skills into `~/.agents/skills` and any detected tool directories (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenCode), so your coding agent picks up Railway expertise for deploying, debugging, and managing services. ```bash railway skills install ``` Target a specific tool with `--agent ` (valid values: `universal`, `claude-code`, `codex`, `opencode`, `cursor`), run `railway skills update` to pick up upstream changes, or `railway skills remove` to uninstall. The skills stay in sync with how Railway wants agents to interact with it, so you get the same guidance whether you're in Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or OpenCode. If you already run a coding agent, this is the fastest way to make it understand Railway without writing a system prompt yourself. As with the rest of the CLI, [the repo](https://github.com/railwayapp/cli) is the right place to file issues or send PRs. ## Fixes and improvements - We fixed a bug where deploying a template into an existing project would instead spin up a new project. Templates now land in the project you picked. - We improved how Railway agent provisions databases. Ask the dashboard agent to add a Postgres, Redis, or any other supported database, and it now sets up the service end-to-end more reliably than before. - We shipped spec-compliant `llms.txt` and `llms-full.txt` at [docs.railway.com/llms.txt](http://docs.railway.com/llms.txt) and [docs.railway.com/llms-full.txt](http://docs.railway.com/llms-full.txt), making it easier for coding agents to index the full Railway documentation. - We improved `railway docs`. The command is now interactive and returns the docs URL along with the `llms.txt` and `llms-full.txt` URLs, making it easier for coding agents to discover where Railway's docs live. Previously, the command only worked interactively.