Deploy and Host Dexter with Web UI on Railway

Dexter with Web UI is a financial research agent wrapped in a secure browser dashboard. It runs autonomous analysis on market data, saves detailed run logs, and lets you launch queries and review outputs without a terminal. It can be triggered manually or scheduled with Railway Cron.

About Hosting Dexter with Web UI

This deployment runs a Bun-based web server that exposes a small dashboard plus an API. You provide LLM and financial data keys via Railway Variables, then start the service with bun run web. The UI lets you launch runs, view history, and inspect full tool logs. For persistence, mount a volume at /app/.dexter to keep JSONL scratchpads across deploys. For scheduled execution, add a Railway Cron that calls the dashboard’s /api/run endpoint using Basic or Bearer auth.

Common Use Cases

• Daily or weekly market research runs with saved logs
• Team-accessible research dashboard without terminal access
• Automated research triggers via Railway Cron

Dependencies for Dexter with Web UI Hosting

• Bun runtime (handled by Railway buildpacks)
• An LLM API key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc.)

Deployment Dependencies

• Dexter repo and docs: https://github.com/virattt/dexter
• Financial Datasets: https://financialdatasets.ai
• OpenAI API keys: https://platform.openai.com/api-keys
• Exa Search (optional): https://exa.ai

Implementation Details

Start Command

bun run web

Dashboard API

• POST /api/run (launches a run, returns runId)
• GET /api/runs (history)
• GET /api/runs/:id (details + logs)

Auth

• Basic auth by default (DASHBOARD_USER + DASHBOARD_PASSWORD)
• Bearer token supported (set DASHBOARD_AUTH_SCHEME=bearer for cron)

Environment Variables

Required

• DASHBOARD_PASSWORD
  Password protecting the dashboard and API.
• One LLM key (choose one):
  • OPENAI_API_KEY
  • ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
  • GOOGLE_API_KEY
  • XAI_API_KEY
  • OPENROUTER_API_KEY
  • MOONSHOT_API_KEY
  • DEEPSEEK_API_KEY
• FINANCIAL_DATASETS_API_KEY
  Needed for full market data coverage (AAPL/NVDA/MSFT are free without it).

Optional

• PORT
  Web server port (Railway injects PORT automatically).
• DASHBOARD_USER
  Username for Basic auth (if empty, any username is accepted).
• DEXTER_MODEL
  Model ID (default: gpt-5.2).
• DEXTER_PROVIDER
  Model provider (default: openai).
• DEXTER_MAX_ITERATIONS
  Max agent loop iterations (default: 10).
• EXASEARCH_API_KEY
  Enables Exa web search.
• TAVILY_API_KEY
  Fallback search provider.
• LANGSMITH_API_KEY, LANGSMITH_ENDPOINT, LANGSMITH_PROJECT, LANGSMITH_TRACING
  Optional tracing (disable if you don’t need it).

Web UI Overview (Custom)

The added Web UI replaces the terminal experience with a clean dashboard:

• New run form to launch a query
• History list of previous runs with status
• Details pane showing query, answer, errors, and tool logs

Runs are saved to .dexter/scratchpad/ as JSONL logs for audit and debugging.

Why Deploy Dexter with Web UI 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 Dexter with Web UI 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.