Deploy and Host Focus Compass on Railway

Focus Compass is a private-first visual workspace for people managing several projects at once. It places projects on a flexible map, keeps each card centered on the next meaningful step, works offline, and turns project notes into AI-ready context—helping founders, freelancers, and indie hackers regain clarity without another heavyweight task manager.

About Hosting Focus Compass

Hosting Focus Compass on Railway deploys the open-source Focus Compass Sync Server as a single stateful Docker service. The server uses Hocuspocus and Yjs for conflict-free WebSocket synchronization and SQLite for persistence. Railway provides the public HTTPS/WSS endpoint, TLS, health checks, logs, and restarts, while a mounted volume keeps workspace data and authentication files across redeployments. After deployment, open the generated Railway URL, create the master connection link during first-time setup, and paste it into Focus Compass. No separate database or Focus Compass account is required. The app remains offline-first; the server is used only when synchronization is enabled.

Common Use Cases

Synchronize a Focus Compass workspace across laptops, phones, and browsers.
Collaborate through real-time, conflict-free project updates powered by Yjs.
Give supported AI clients read-only access to project context through the optional MCP endpoint.

Dependencies for Focus Compass Hosting

Hocuspocus and Yjs for real-time CRDT-based WebSocket synchronization.
SQLite and a Railway Volume for persistent workspace and authentication data.
A Node.js 24 Docker runtime, provided automatically by the included Dockerfile.

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

The Railway template is configured with:

PORT=8080
HTTP public networking targeting port 8080
Health check path: /health
Persistent volume mounted at /app/data

Authentication tokens do not need to be configured before deployment. On the first visit, the server opens its setup screen, generates the master token, and stores it in the persistent volume. The resulting wss:// connection link should be treated like a password and pasted into Focus Compass sync settings.

Why Deploy Focus Compass 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 Focus Compass 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.