Deploy and Host Casebook on Railway

A digital crime investigation board developed in Three.js using Fable 5. It allows users to visually organize, map, and analyze evidence, notes, and connections within an interactive 3D workspace. Designed for researchers, storytellers, cyber investigators, and enthusiasts who need an intuitive, visual approach to organizing complex case details.

About Hosting Casebook

Deploying Casebook on Railway provides a streamlined, containerized hosting environment for serving your digital investigation board. Railway automatically handles the continuous deployment, static asset serving, and container runtime required by the application. Network exposure is configured seamlessly through Railway's edge proxy, delivering an SSL/HTTPS endpoint automatically upon generating a domain.

Since Casebook runs as a web frontend utilizing Three.js and Fable-compiled assets, hosting on Railway ensures minimal infrastructure maintenance, high availability, and easy vertical or horizontal scaling. Storage and runtime depend on your custom repository configuration or static hosting setup, while Railway's global network delivers low-latency access to the interactive 3D board.

Common Use Cases

Digital Crime & Cyber Investigations: Visualizing evidence, suspect relationships, and event timelines in a single interactive board.
Storytelling & Worldbuilding: Mapping out complex narratives, character webs, and mystery plots for writers and game developers.
Research & Threat Intelligence: Organizing links, notes, and research entities during complex open-source intelligence (OSINT) gathering.

Dependencies for Casebook Hosting

Dependency	Type	Description
Node.js / Web Server	Runtime	Required to build Fable assets and serve static web content

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

Docker

If deploying via Docker, Railway will automatically detect and build from a Dockerfile present in the repository root. If using static hosting or continuous deployment from GitHub, Railway automatically builds and serves the Node.js frontend.

Public Networking

Setting	Value
Proxy Type	HTTP Proxy
Target Port	8080

(Note: Target port depends on your chosen web server or container setup. Standard HTTP proxy settings apply.)

Environment Variables

Variable	Required	Description
`PORT`	No	Port on which the web server listens (defaults to `8080` or Railway standard)

PORT=8080

Persistent Storage

Persistent storage (Railway Volume) is optional and depends on whether your instance requires persistent local file caching or user uploads beyond client-side session state. If needed:

Open your Railway Service.
Go to Settings → Volumes.
Click Add Volume.
Set the Mount Path (e.g., /app/data).

Database

No dedicated external database (e.g., PostgreSQL or Redis) is explicitly required by default for the core client-side visualization tool.

Build & Start

No custom build or start commands are required if utilizing a standard Dockerfile or Node.js auto-detection.

Accessing the Application

In the Railway Dashboard, go to your service's Settings tab.
Under Networking, click Generate Domain.
Click the generated URL to access your Casebook web application via HTTPS.

Why Deploy Casebook on Railway?

Railway is a modern app hosting platform that simplifies deployment, scaling, and infrastructure management. With automated builds, seamless environment variable management, and automatic HTTPS, Railway makes it effortless to run applications in production without managing complex server infrastructure.