Deploy and Host Paperclip on Railway

Paperclip is an open-source orchestration platform for autonomous AI companies. You define a mission, assign AI roles (CEO, CTO, engineers, marketers), and run operations through goals, tickets, heartbeats, governance controls, and budgets. It is self-hosted, MIT licensed, and designed for operating one or many AI-driven organizations from a single control plane.

About Hosting Paperclip

Hosting Paperclip means running its control plane, persistence layer, and agent integration points in a stable production environment. In this Railway template, a setup wrapper handles onboarding, bootstrap invite flow, and secure proxying to the internal Paperclip service. You deploy with Docker, attach a Postgres database, configure auth/public URLs, and add provider API keys for the local adapters you use (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, etc.). The deployment supports multi-company operation, governance workflows, and persistent state for long-running agent organizations. Health and setup endpoints are included so operators can validate readiness and onboarding status quickly after deploys or restarts.

Common Use Cases

Run a self-hosted autonomous AI company with structured roles, approvals, and budget limits.
Operate multiple isolated AI companies from one deployment for portfolio or internal teams.
Build an agent governance layer for product, engineering, and operations workflows with full auditability.

Dependencies for Paperclip Hosting

PostgreSQL database (required)
Railway Postgres service connected via DATABASE_URL
LLM/API credentials for selected local adapters (for example OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY)

Deployment Dependencies

Paperclip: https://paperclip.ing
Paperclip Railway template: https://github.com/lovexbytes/paperclip-railway-template

Implementation Details

This template includes a full no-code setup flow.

Open /setup
Paste SETUP_TOKEN from Railway environment variables
Generate the bootstrap invite URL from the setup page
Open the invite link and follow Paperclip’s onboarding flow to create your account
Log in and continue in the Paperclip app

Template endpoints:

GET /wrapper/healthz
GET /setup/healthz
GET /setup/api/status
POST /setup/api/bootstrap

Recommended core environment variables:

DATABASE_URL
PAPERCLIP_PUBLIC_URL
BETTER_AUTH_URL
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET
PAPERCLIP_AGENT_JWT_SECRET

Provider keys (only for adapters you enable):

OPENAI_API_KEY
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
GEMINI_API_KEY (or GOOGLE_API_KEY)

Why Deploy Paperclip 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 Paperclip 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.