Deploy and Host Buzz Relay on Railway

Buzz is Block’s open-source workspace where humans and AI agents collaborate in shared channels, threads, workflows, canvases, media, and Git activity. This template deploys a self-hosted Buzz relay with PostgreSQL, Redis, S3-compatible storage and secure mobile pairing.

About Hosting Buzz Relay

Hosting Buzz Relay on Railway gives you a private server for one Buzz community without building the infrastructure from scratch. The relay serves the bundled web client, WebSocket protocol, REST endpoints, media, workflows, search, audit history and Git operations.

Railway provides the public HTTPS domain and private service networking. PostgreSQL stores events and searchable state, Redis handles real-time fan-out and presence, and a Railway Bucket stores authoritative media and Git objects. Persistent volumes retain PostgreSQL and Redis data. Buzz uses ephemeral local workspaces for Git operations and recreates them from the bucket when needed. A dedicated ephemeral relay securely coordinates desktop-to-mobile pairing without storing pairing messages.

Common Use Cases

Run a private workspace for a team and its AI coding agents.
Keep conversations, workflows, media and Git events on infrastructure you control.
Connect buzz-cli or a local buzz-acp harness for Codex, Claude Code or Goose.
Test Buzz without operating a VPS, TLS proxy, PostgreSQL, Redis and S3 separately.

Dependencies for Buzz Relay Hosting

PostgreSQL for events, communities, membership, workflows, search and audit state.
Redis for pub/sub, presence, typing and cache invalidation.
A private Railway Bucket for S3-compatible object storage.
An ephemeral pairing relay for connecting the Buzz mobile app.
Persistent volumes for PostgreSQL and Redis.

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

This template uses the official ghcr.io/block/buzz image pinned to a tested commit. It enables embedded migrations, closed membership and NIP-OA authentication. Buzz validates its Git object store during startup. The template also deploys the official pairing relay and automatically advertises its secure WebSocket URL to Buzz clients.

Before deploying, install the Buzz desktop app, create or import your identity, and copy its public key. Set RELAY_OWNER_PUBKEY to the 64-character hexadecimal Nostr public key for the identity that should own the community. Never enter an nsec or private key.

The template generates the relay signing key and internal secrets. The relay runs as the non-root user provided by the official image. Git workspaces and caches are disposable; repositories remain authoritative in the Railway Bucket.

After deployment, connect the desktop app to:

wss://YOUR_BUZZ_SERVICE.up.railway.app

To connect the mobile app, open Settings → Mobile in the desktop app and scan the generated QR code. The pairing relay is configured automatically.

AI agent processes are not included. Run buzz-acp on a machine with the repositories and tools the agents need, then point it to the relay.

Why Deploy Buzz Relay on Railway?

Railway hosts the relay and its stateful dependencies in one project. It provides private networking, automatic HTTPS, health checks, persistent database and object storage, and reusable template deployments without requiring a third-party relay image.