Deploy and Host hermes-agent-deploy on Railway

hermes-agent-deploy is a minimal Railway-ready deployment template for running a stateful Hermes agent with Telegram and OpenRouter. It packages the official Hermes image, validates required environment variables at startup, mounts persistent storage for agent state, and provides a straightforward foundation for securely operating a single Hermes gateway in production.

About Hosting hermes-agent-deploy

Hosting hermes-agent-deploy on Railway involves deploying a Docker-based Hermes service, attaching a persistent volume, and configuring the required environment variables for Telegram access and model provider credentials. This template is designed for a single long-running Hermes gateway that keeps its sessions, memory, configuration, and editable instructions across restarts. Railway handles the build and runtime infrastructure, while the template bootstrap script configures Hermes from environment variables on each boot. The result is a reproducible, low-maintenance deployment path for users who want a persistent AI agent without managing their own servers.

Common Use Cases

• Run a private Telegram-based Hermes assistant for personal workflows or operator tasks.
• Deploy a persistent AI agent with retained sessions, memory, and workspace state.
• Use Railway as a simple hosting layer for Hermes prototypes, internal tools, or lightweight production agents.

Dependencies for hermes-agent-deploy Hosting

• A Telegram bot token from BotFather and one or more allowed Telegram user IDs.
• An OpenRouter API key and a supported model ID for Hermes to use.

Deployment Dependencies

• Hermes Agent: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent
• Railway: https://railway.com/
• Telegram BotFather: https://telegram.me/BotFather
• OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai/

Implementation Details

This template expects a persistent Railway volume mounted at /opt/data and uses environment variables as the source of truth for runtime configuration.

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=your-bot-token
TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS=123456789
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your-openrouter-key
HERMES_MODEL=openai/gpt-5.4-mini
GATEWAY_ALLOW_ALL_USERS=false
HERMES_HOME=/opt/data

The deployment should run as a single replica to avoid multiple Hermes containers sharing the same persistent state volume.

Why Deploy hermes-agent-deploy 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 hermes-agent-deploy 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.