Deploy and Host Flowctl on Railway

Flowctl is an open-source self-service workflow execution platform. Define flows, run them on demand or on a schedule, add approvals, and organize work with namespaces and RBAC — shipped as a single binary with a modern UI.

About Hosting Flowctl

This template deploys Flowctl from the public image ghcr.io/cvhariharan/flowctl:0.15.0 with managed PostgreSQL on Railway's private network. On start, the container runs migrations and admin bootstrap (flowctl install), then serves the UI on port 7000. Flow definitions and execution logs persist on a volume at /data. Generate a public domain on the Flowctl service so ROOT_URL resolves, then sign in with the admin username and password you set at deploy. Only those two credentials need configuration; database wiring, encryption keys, and runtime settings are prefilled.

Common Use Cases

Self-service internal automation (access requests, provisioning, ops runbooks)
Scheduled reporting and maintenance workflows with approvals
Team namespaces with RBAC for shared workflow catalogs

Dependencies for Flowctl Hosting

PostgreSQL — included for metadata, users, schedules, and execution history
Persistent volume — /data for flow definitions and execution logs
Public domain — required for the app URL and optional OIDC callbacks later

Deployment Dependencies

Flowctl repository
Public Docker image — ghcr.io/cvhariharan/flowctl:0.15.0
Official docker-compose reference
Nodes and executors docs

Implementation Details

Railway does not expose a Docker socket, so Flowctl's built-in Docker executor will not work here. Use the script or flow executor, or remote nodes over SSH.

At deploy time, set only:

FLOWCTL_APP__ADMIN_USERNAME — initial superadmin (default flowctl_admin)
FLOWCTL_APP__ADMIN_PASSWORD — initial superadmin password

Why Deploy Flowctl 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 Flowctl 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.