Deploy and Host Happier Relay Server on Railway

Happier is an open-source, end-to-end encrypted app for running and steering coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode on your own machines from your phone, desktop or browser. Its relay server syncs sessions, messages and approvals between your devices. This template deploys your own relay with the web app included, keeps its data on a volume, and closes sign-up as soon as your account exists. It is a community-maintained template and is not affiliated with the Happier project.

About Hosting Happier Relay Server

The relay is a single Node.js server (Happier's light flavour) with an embedded SQLite database, serving the API, a WebSocket channel for live updates, and the Happier web app on one port. Session content is encrypted on your devices; the relay stores ciphertext. Agents keep running on your own computers, which connect out to the relay.

A stock relay on a public URL lets anyone who finds it create an account. This template keeps sign-up open only until the first account exists, then restarts the server with sign-up switched off; your other devices still link to your account.

Common Use Cases

Approve, steer and review Claude Code or Codex sessions on your workstation from your phone
Keep agent session history and sync on infrastructure you control instead of a shared cloud relay
Pair several dev boxes and laptops to one account and switch between them from any device
Run a private relay for the Happier desktop, mobile and web apps

Dependencies for Happier Relay Server Hosting

None external: SQLite is embedded and stored on the service's volume
Your own computers run the Happier CLI and daemon with your agent subscriptions (Claude, Codex, ...)

Deployment Dependencies

Happier (MIT): https://github.com/happier-dev/happier
Template source, image and tests: https://github.com/youssefsiam38/happier-railway

Implementation Details

First steps: right after the deploy turns green, open your service's domain and create your account in the web app; back up the secret key it shows. Sign-up closes about 10 seconds later. In the Happier phone or desktop app, add the server (https://) and link your account. On each computer, install the Happier CLI and run happier setup --relay https://.

What's configured for you: the official happierdev/relay-server image pinned by digest and used unmodified, plus a start script that fixes the volume's ownership for the non-root server and enforces the sign-up limit (SIGNUP_ACCOUNT_LIMIT, default 1); the public URL set from your Railway domain for QR codes and deep links; a generated token secret; Railway's edge trusted for client IPs so rate limits apply per client; data on a volume at /data; a health check on /health; upstream crash reporting off.

More people: raise SIGNUP_ACCOUNT_LIMIT and redeploy; sign-up reopens until that many accounts exist.

Tested on a live deployment of this template over HTTPS: account creation and the sign-up lock, refused second accounts, device-key sign-in, sessions, encrypted messages and key-value storage, the realtime WebSocket channel, terminal pairing, and data plus the lock surviving a redeploy.

Why Deploy Happier Relay Server 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 Happier Relay Server 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.