Deploy and Host Kubo MCP on Railway

Kubo MCP is a Model Context Protocol server that lets LLM agents store files on IPFS. It ships with its own IPFS Kubo node, so an agent can upload an image or a file and get back a CID and a gateway URL in one call.

About Hosting Kubo MCP

The MCP server talks to Kubo's RPC API over Railway's private network, so the admin-level RPC port is never exposed. The MCP checks bearer tokens itself, so no gateway service is needed in front of it. Uploads are streamed, pinned and addressed with CIDv1.

Common Use Cases

Let Claude, Cursor or other MCP clients publish images and files to IPFS
Give agents permanent, content-addressed links to generated assets
Pin and unpin content from agent workflows
Read back files and images stored on your own node

Dependencies for Kubo MCP Hosting

The template includes everything: the Kubo node with persistent storage, and the MCP server.

Deployment Dependencies

None.

Implementation Details

Architecture Components

This template deploys two services:

Kubo: the IPFS Kubo node with a volume at /data/ipfs. Its RPC API requires a generated bearer secret and is reachable only at kubo.railway.internal:5001.
Kubo MCP: the kubo-mcp server (ghcr.io/fournyp/kubo-mcp) on a public Railway domain, serving stateless HTTP MCP at /mcp.

Tools

add_file, add_file_from_url, get_file, get_file_info, pin_file, unpin_file, list_pins. Restrict them with MCP__ENABLED_TOOLS.

Authentication

Clients send Authorization: Bearer , where `` is one of the comma-separated entries in AUTH__API_KEYS. /health stays open for Railway's health check.

Service Configuration

MCP endpoint: https:///mcp
Claude Code: claude mcp add kubo --transport http https:///mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer "
Swarm: the TCP proxy on port 4001 lets other IPFS peers reach the node.

License Information

MIT (Kubo, kubo-mcp).

Why Deploy Kubo MCP on Railway?

The IPFS node, the MCP server, the private-network wiring and both secrets are set up in one click, so agents can publish to IPFS without you running or exposing a node yourself.

Notes

Source repo: https://github.com/FournyP/kubo-mcp
Kubo template: https://github.com/FournyP/kubo-railway-template
Model Context Protocol: https://modelcontextprotocol.io