Deploy and Host Outpost on Railway

Outpost is a private, browser-based FreeCAD workstation — no local installation required. Sign in with your own GitHub account and design inside a full CAD session streamed straight to your browser tab. Your work saves directly to a git repository you own, so your files stay usable outside the browser too.

About Hosting Outpost

Hosting Outpost means running one Railway service: a small Go authentication shim (the gatekeeper) sitting in front of a containerized FreeCAD desktop, streamed over WebSocket. The gatekeeper handles GitHub device-flow sign-in, pins access to a single GitHub account you specify, and hands your session's token straight to the CAD environment's git integration — one login doubles as your git credential. The first deploy takes a few minutes, since Railway is building and setting up a full FreeCAD environment from scratch; every deploy after that is fast. Because your files live in a git repo, not on the server, the running instance itself is fully disposable.

Common Use Cases

A personal CAD workstation reachable from any device — laptop, tablet, even a phone — without installing FreeCAD locally
Hobbyists and makers who want real version history on their designs without learning git directly
A disposable, always-current CAD environment for occasional projects, so you're not maintaining a permanent workstation just for the times you need it

Dependencies for Outpost Hosting

A GitHub account — used both to sign in and as the home for your saved design files
A Railway account with a payment method on file (Hobby plan covers this comfortably)

The only field you need to fill in below is ALLOWED_GITHUB_USER — your GitHub username. This is the identity check that keeps your workspace private: anyone who signs in with a different GitHub account is turned away automatically, no matter who else has the deployment URL.

Learn more on the Github Page: https://github.com/nerd-sniped/outpost