Deploy Sorry Cypress

A self-hosted Cypress dashboard alternative — run tests in parallel, collect results, and visualize outcomes without the Cypress Cloud paywall. Includes MongoDB for persistence, a director for test distribution, a GraphQL API, and a React dashboard UI.

Deploy and Host

Host your own Cypress dashboard on Railway. This template provisions MongoDB, Director, API, and Dashboard services with a persistent volume for test data.

Features

• Parallel test distribution — director splits specs across CI runners automatically
• Dashboard UI — React app with run history, spec status, screenshots, and video playback
• GraphQL API — full query layer for runs, specs, projects, and results
• MongoDB-backed — all test metadata and results persist across restarts
• S3 screenshot storage — automatic capture on failure (optional, requires AWS or MinIO)
• CI integration — drop-in replacement for Cypress Dashboard via cypress-cloud reporter

Configuration

Architecture

CI runners ──► director (:1234) ──► api (:4000) ──► mongodb (:27017)
                                      │
                                      ▼
                              dashboard (:8080) ◄── browser

• director — receives run requests from CI, assigns specs to workers, stores results in MongoDB
• api — GraphQL server that queries MongoDB for runs/specs/projects
• dashboard — React UI that calls the GraphQL API
• mongodb — stores all test metadata, results, screenshots, and video references

About Hosting

Sorry Cypress is a four-service app on Railway:

1. MongoDB — stateful database with a persistent volume mounted at /data/db
2. Director — stateless HTTP service that receives CI run requests
3. API — stateless GraphQL server that reads/writes MongoDB
4. Dashboard — static React SPA that calls the API

Inter-service traffic uses Railway's internal networking (*.railway.internal). The dashboard is the only service exposed publicly. The director can optionally be exposed if you need CI runners outside Railway to reach it.

Persistent Storage

The MongoDB service mounts a 5 GB volume at /data/db. All test metadata, results, screenshots, and video references persist across restarts. The other three services are stateless and can be rebuilt without data loss.

Scaling

• Director and API scale horizontally for high test volume
• Dashboard is a static SPA — a single instance handles many concurrent browser clients
• MongoDB is single-instance; scale vertically by increasing volume size

Why Deploy

• Cost — Cypress Cloud charges per test result. Self-hosting means paying only for Railway compute.
• Privacy — test results, screenshots, and videos stay on your own infrastructure.
• Parallelization — distribute specs across many CI runners for faster builds.
• No vendor lock-in — sorry-cypress is open source (MIT). Fork it, modify it, or migrate away anytime.
• Full control — configure S3 storage, set custom retention, and integrate with any CI system.

Dependencies for Deployment

Deployment Dependencies

• Railway project with environment set to production
• Persistent volume mounted at /data/db on the MongoDB service
• Internal networking (*.railway.internal) for inter-service communication

Runtime Dependencies

• MongoDB 4.4+ (included via mongo:4.4 image)
• Node.js 18+ (bundled in service images)

Common Use Cases

• Replace Cypress Cloud with a self-hosted alternative for test parallelization
• Collect test results from multiple CI runners into a single dashboard
• Keep test metadata and screenshots on your own infrastructure
• Run CI tests cheaper by distributing specs across smaller machines

After Deploy

1. Open the dashboard URL in your browser
2. Configure your Cypress projects to use the sorry-cypress reporter:

   // cypress.config.js
   module.exports = {
     reporter: 'cypress-cloud',
     reporterOptions: {
       url: 'https://director-production-XXXX.up.railway.app'
     }
   }
   

3. Run tests — they appear in the dashboard automatically