---
title: "Deploy MyHOT (AIHOT Fork)"
description: "Self-run AI news site that finds hot topics and writes a daily digest"
category: "AI/ML"
url: https://railway.com/deploy/deploy-aihot-ai-news-digest
---

# Deploy MyHOT (AIHOT Fork)

Self-run AI news site that finds hot topics and writes a daily digest

**[Deploy MyHOT (AIHOT Fork) on Railway](https://railway.com/template/deploy-aihot-ai-news-digest)**

Machine-readable deploy manifest (JSON, validated by TemplateCI): https://railway.com/deploy/deploy-aihot-ai-news-digest/manifest.json

- **Creator:** onepush
- **Category:** AI/ML

## Template content

### Postgres https://www.postgresql.org/media/img/about/press/elephant.png

- **Image:** ghcr.io/railwayapp-templates/postgres-ssl:18

### aihot

- **Image:** ghcr.io/onepush-dev/aihot:edfa18f
- **Public domain:** Yes

## Documentation

# Deploy and Host self hosted AIHOT (AI News Digest) on Railway

This template deploys AIHOT, an open-source AI news site that finds hot topics across many sources and writes a daily digest, on your own Railway project.

## About Hosting AIHOT open-source software on Railway (self hosted AIHOT template)

AIHOT is MIT-licensed software that collects AI news from your chosen sources, scores and summarizes it, and publishes a site with a daily briefing.

## Why Deploy AIHOT, the open-source AI news site on Railway (Railway Free Trial)

Feedly sells a hosted reader, and that is fine if you only need to skim feeds.

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 AIHOT 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.

### Railway vs Other Hosting Providers and VPS for AIHOT self hosting

Choosing where to run AIHOT depends on how much server work you want to do yourself.

| Provider | What You Get with Railway | What You Get with the Other Provider |
| --- | --- | --- |
| DigitalOcean | The aihot app and Postgres deploy from one template with generated secrets and a public domain, so there is no Droplet to patch. | A Droplet you provision and harden yourself, with Docker and the compose setup installed by hand. |
| AWS | A managed deploy where the image, database and variables are wired together, with no networking design needed first. | Broad control over networking and storage, with a longer setup where you assemble instances and the database yourself. |
| Hetzner | Hands-off hosting where the domain, restart policy and Postgres are handled by the template. | Inexpensive servers with strong raw performance, where you manage the OS, Docker and AIHOT directly. |

## Common Use Cases for hosted AIHOT

- **Personal AI news radar with a daily briefing:** Read the daily briefing, published at 08:00 Beijing time by default, and skim one page of scored, summarized items instead of scrolling a dozen feeds each morning.
- **Niche news site for your own field:** Swap in sources for law, HR or finance and adjust the prompts and selection criteria in admin, so the same engine produces a digest tuned to your readers rather than general AI news.
- **Feeding agents through RSS, the public API and MCP:** Point your own agents at the RSS feeds, the public API or the MCP endpoint so they consume ranked, deduplicated items without you scraping anything.
- **Team digest that replaces manual link-sharing:** Give a small team one shared site and daily briefing, so people stop pasting the same articles into chat and everyone works from one curated list.
- **Tracking trending events by heat across many sources:** Watch which stories are gaining momentum, since reports of the same event are clustered and heat counts each independent source once within 48 hours, halving every 24 hours.

## Dependencies for AIHOT Docker hosted on Railway

This template runs as two Railway services: the aihot app service, which bundles the API, worker and web app in one container, and a Postgres database.

### Deployment Dependencies for Managed AIHOT Service (aihot app service plus Postgres)

The aihot service runs ghcr.io/onepush-dev/aihot:edfa18f on port 8080 for the public domain, with a volume at /data and a restart policy of always.

The template generates five aihot variables with no input from you:

| Variable | Purpose |
| --- | --- |
| ADMIN_PASSWORD | Generated 32 character secret for signing in to /admin |
| SESSION_SECRET | Generated 48 character secret for login sessions |
| IMG_PROXY_SIGN_SECRET | Generated 48 character secret for the image proxy |
| DATABASE_URL | Reference to the Postgres service |
| SITE_URL | Set to https plus your Railway public domain |

Three optional LLM variables are not in the template: LLM_API_KEY, LLM_BASE_URL and LLM_MODEL.

### Implementation Details for AIHOT (Using the onepush-dev AIHOT image built from the upstream Dockerfile)

The onepush-dev image is built by GitHub Actions from the upstream Dockerfile at commit edfa18f, with tini as init.

## How does AIHOT compare against other self-hosted news and feed tools

### AIHOT vs FreshRSS (FreshRSS Alternative)

- **Core job:** AIHOT collects sources, scores items against a rubric, clusters duplicate reports into one event and writes a daily digest. FreshRSS is a feed reader you read yourself.
- **Output:** AIHOT publishes a site with a daily briefing at 08:00 by default, plus RSS, a public API and MCP for agents.
- **Where FreshRSS wins:** for a mature, lightweight reader you triage by hand, it is simpler.

### AIHOT vs Miniflux (Miniflux Alternative)

- **Curation:** AIHOT pre-screens and scores each item with a language model and ranks events by heat across sources.
- **Writing:** AIHOT writes headlines and summaries and compiles weekly and monthly reports. Miniflux only stores and displays what it fetches.
- **Where Miniflux wins:** it is a minimal, fast reader with no model dependency, suited to plain feed reading.

### AIHOT vs Huginn (Huginn Alternative)

- **Scope:** Huginn is a general agent and automation tool you wire up yourself. AIHOT is a fixed pipeline built for one job: an AI news site.
- **Setup effort:** with AIHOT you edit sources and criteria in /admin instead of building agents from scratch.
- **Where Huginn wins:** for flexible automation across many unrelated tasks, it covers far more ground.

### AIHOT on your laptop with Docker Compose vs AIHOT on Railway (Railway Hosting Alternative)

- **Uptime:** a laptop stops collecting when it sleeps. Railway runs the API, worker and web app continuously, with automatic restarts.
- **Public access:** Railway gives you a public domain, and you set SITE_URL to it so RSS links and the sitemap are correct.
- **Where local wins:** Docker Compose on your own machine keeps data fully local at no hosting cost, which suits private experiments.

## How to use AIHOT (the OSS AI news digest)?

1. Wait for both services to turn green, about two and a half minutes on a fresh deploy.

2. Open the public domain Railway generated for the aihot service.

3. Open /admin and sign in with the ADMIN_PASSWORD value from the aihot Variables tab.

4. Look at the 18 seeded demo sources in admin. AIHOT's own source list is not included.

5. Add LLM_API_KEY on the aihot service and redeploy. For a non-DeepSeek OpenAI-compatible provider, also set LLM_BASE_URL and LLM_MODEL.

6. Wait for items to be scored and summarized. Until a key is set, the worker logs "nothing judged", which is expected.

7. Edit sources and selection criteria in admin to fit your field, using trial fetches to check each source.

Check that the API responds:

```
curl https://your-domain/api/health
```

A 200 response means the service is up.

## How to self host AIHOT on other VPS Services (AIHOT self hosting guide)

Use this path if you want AIHOT on your own Linux server instead of Railway.

### Clone the Repository

Clone the upstream project and move into the folder. You need git on the server.

```bash
git clone https://github.com/KKKKhazix/AIHOT.git
cd AIHOT
```

### Install Dependencies

Install Node.js 24 and Docker with Compose. Docker runs the PostgreSQL 17 database that the upstream stack expects.

```bash
node --version
docker --version
```

### Configure Environment Variables

Generate the environment file and pass your model API key. Replace YOUR_KEY with your real key.

```bash
node scripts/init-env.ts --llm-key YOUR_KEY
```

### Start the AIHOT Application

Build and start the containers in the background, then open port 3000 in your firewall and visit your server address.

```bash
docker compose up -d --build
```

On a VPS you handle the firewall, TLS and backups yourself, while Railway handles TLS and restarts for you.

## Official Pricing of AIHOT (AIHOT pricing)

AIHOT is MIT licensed and free to use, modify and self host. You pay for hosting and for your own model API usage.

## AIHOT hosted site vs self hosted comparison (Pricing, features, costs, and more)

aihot.news is the author's own AI news site, and its source list and operating data are not included in the repo. There is no hosted plan to buy.

### Monthly cost of self hosting AIHOT on Railway

Railway bills by usage, so your monthly bill depends on the RAM and CPU used by the aihot service and Postgres, plus volume size. Check Railway's pricing page for current rates.

### System Requirements for Hosting AIHOT on a VPS

Plan for enough memory to run Node.js 24, the API, the worker, the web app and PostgreSQL 17 together, plus disk for the database and the /data volume.

## Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

### Where do I find the admin password?

Open the aihot service in Railway, go to the Variables tab, and copy the ADMIN_PASSWORD value. Sign in at /admin on your public domain with that password.

### Do I need an AI key to deploy?

No. The site boots, seeds demo sources and collects without one; add LLM_API_KEY later for scoring and summaries.

### Why does the worker log "nothing judged"?

This is expected when LLM_API_KEY is not set yet, because the worker has no model to score items with.

### Why is the site in Chinese and named MyHOT?

The upstream interface and generated text are written in Chinese, and the default site name is MyHOT because the repo asks users not to use the AIHOT name or logo.

### Can I use a provider other than DeepSeek?

Yes. Any OpenAI-compatible API will work, so set LLM_BASE_URL and LLM_MODEL on the aihot service to point at your provider and redeploy.

### What does SITE_URL do?

SITE_URL sets the absolute address the site uses in RSS links, share links, images, the sitemap, Agent Markdown and MCP host checks.


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