Deploy and Host AI Comic Builder on Railway

About Hosting

AI Comic Builder is an AI-driven comic animation platform that converts scripts into full video output through character extraction, storyboard generation, frame generation, and clip synthesis. It is built with Next.js, React, SQLite, and FFmpeg.

This Railway template deploys AI Comic Builder as a single container service using the upstream Docker image twwch/aicomicbuilder:0.1.0 and exposes it on port 3000. It uses one mounted volume at /app/data for persistence, and UPLOAD_DIR is set to /app/data/uploads so generated assets are persisted in the same volume.

Why Deploy

Self-hosted AI video workflow: Keep project data, scripts, and generated assets in your own infrastructure.
One-service deployment: No external database required by default.
Provider flexibility: Supports multiple AI providers for text, image, and video generation.
Fast startup path: Uses upstream pre-built Docker image with minimal custom config.
Persistent project storage: Can retain SQLite data and uploaded/generated files with Railway volume mounts.

Common Use Cases

Build animated short videos from script drafts for social content.
Run a private internal tool for storyboard and AI-assisted pre-production.
Test different model providers and prompt strategies in one UI pipeline.
Host a demo instance for teams to collaborate on AI comic generation.

Dependencies for Deployment

Deployment Dependencies

Dependency	Details
Docker Image	`twwch/aicomicbuilder:0.1.0`
Container Port	`3000`
Persistent Volume	Required at `/app/data` (SQLite and uploads persisted under one mount)
Required Env Vars	`PORT=3000`, plus at least one provider key among `OPENAI_API_KEY`, `GEMINI_API_KEY`, or `SEEDANCE_API_KEY`
Optional Env Vars	`OPENAI_BASE_URL`, `OPENAI_MODEL`, `SEEDANCE_BASE_URL`, `SEEDANCE_MODEL`, `KLING_ACCESS_KEY`, `KLING_SECRET_KEY`
External Services	Optional AI provider APIs (OpenAI, Gemini, Seedance, Kling)