Deploy and Host openclaw on Railway

openclaw is a self-hosted, multi-channel personal AI assistant that bridges chat platforms (Telegram, Discord, Slack, Matrix, iMessage, Signal, Feishu, and more) to LLM providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter). This template wraps the upstream openclaw image with Railway-friendly defaults and a daily auto-sync workflow that always pins the latest upstream release — no manual build maintenance required.

About Hosting openclaw

This template deploys openclaw's gateway service — the HTTP/WebSocket server that handles channels, LLM routing, and the Control UI. State persists on a 5 GB Railway volume mounted at /data so tokens, channel auth, and workspace files survive redeploys. A GitHub Actions workflow on the source repo repins the wrapper to the latest upstream digest daily, smoke-tests it, then pushes — Railway redeploys automatically. Upstream improvements and security patches arrive on their own. Configure LLM keys and channel tokens via the Variables tab after the first deploy; no setup required to boot.

Common Use Cases

• Personal AI assistant accessible from Telegram, Discord, Slack, Matrix, or any other supported messaging app — no separate client to install
• Multi-channel bridge that lets the same agent context follow you across messengers, with shared memory and session history
• Self-hosted alternative to chat.openai.com / claude.ai with full control over data, prompts, channel routing, and the Control UI

Dependencies for openclaw Hosting

openclaw runs as a single Node.js gateway service. It does not require an external database, Redis, or object store — all state is filesystem-based on a persistent volume. The only third-party dependencies are the LLM providers and messaging channels you choose to enable, each authenticated with their own API token or bot credential.

Deployment Dependencies

• A 5 GB Railway volume mounted at /data (auto-attached by this template) for persistent gateway state, channel auth, and workspace files
• At least one LLM provider key configured via the service Variables tab after deploy: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY, or OPENROUTER_API_KEY
• Optional channel tokens for any messengers you want to enable: TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN, DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN, SLACK_BOT_TOKEN, etc. (full list in the upstream .env.example)

Why Deploy openclaw on Railway?

Railway runs the openclaw gateway with persistent volumes, automatic HTTPS, and zero-config GitHub-driven redeploys. Combined with this template's daily upstream sync workflow, every project you spawn from the Deploy button stays current with openclaw releases — no Dockerfile maintenance, no manual docker pull, no bumping image tags. You get a fully managed, always-up-to-date personal AI assistant with a public URL in under five minutes, while keeping full control of your data, configuration, and channel routing.