Deploy and Host Andromeda - Easel on Railway

Andromeda - Easel is a self-hosted Go app that surfaces a daily painting from the Art Institute of Chicago, persisting each day's selection to SQLite. Past days stay browsable through a web UI, JSON API, and an Atom feed; future days are unavailable.

About Hosting Andromeda - Easel

Hosting Andromeda - Easel means running a single Go binary that serves the web pages, JSON API, and Atom feed over HTTP. State is a SQLite file, so deployment needs only a persistent volume plus a handful of environment variables (timezone, base URL, port, classification filters). A background scheduler fetches and dedupes each day's artwork, so the host must have correct timezone data — the Docker image installs tzdata. On Railway, the included Dockerfile builds the image, a persistent volume holds the database, and environment variables configure the rest. No external database service is required.

Common Use Cases

A daily-art landing page for a personal or portfolio site
An Atom feed source (/feed.xml) for subscribing to a painting a day
A headless art-of-the-day API via GET /api/today, /api/day/{date}, /api/archive

Dependencies for Andromeda - Easel Hosting

A persistent volume for the SQLite database
System timezone data (tzdata) — bundled in the Docker image

Deployment Dependencies

Andromeda repository
Releases page
Art Institute of Chicago API (upstream data source)

Implementation Details

Environment variables (see .env.example):

HOST=0.0.0.0
PORT=4242
EASEL_DB_PATH=/data/easel.sqlite
EASEL_TIMEZONE=UTC
EASEL_CLASSIFICATIONS=painting
EASEL_EXCLUDE_TERMS=erotic,erotica,shunga
EASEL_BACKFILL_DAYS=0
EASEL_MAX_DEDUP_RETRIES=10
EASEL_BASE_URL=https://your-app.up.railway.app

Mount a Railway volume so EASEL_DB_PATH persists across deploys. Set HOST=0.0.0.0 and EASEL_BASE_URL to your public URL.

Why Deploy Andromeda - Easel on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying Andromeda - Easel on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.