Deploy Strix AI Pentest Agent

Deploy and Host Strix with Railway

Deploy and host Strix AI, an autonomous AI penetration-testing agent, as a headless, containerized worker on Railway. The image ships a full pentest toolchain (Subfinder, Nmap, Nuclei, SQLMap, TruffleHog, and more), and a registered local runtime backend (STRIX_RUNTIME_BACKEND=local) executes scan tools in-container — no Docker daemon required.

> [!WARNING] > Only run Strix against systems you own or have explicit, written authorization to test. Unauthorized security testing is illegal in most jurisdictions.

About Hosting Strix

Strix runs as an on-demand headless worker, not an HTTP server: the container stays resident (sleep infinity) and you launch scans through railway ssh. A volume at /workspace persists scan reports and workspace state across restarts and redeploys. Google Gemini powers the LLM reasoning loop via a single GEMINI_API_KEY variable.

Why Deploy Strix on Railway?

• No infrastructure to run locally — the full Kali-based toolchain (10+ GB of scanners) lives in a prebuilt image, ready in about a minute.
• Persistent workspace — volumes keep scan reports, session state, and nuclei templates across redeploys.
• On-demand usage — pay only while the worker is up; scale down between engagement windows.
• CLI-first operation — trigger scans, fetch reports, and tail logs entirely from railway ssh / railway logs.

Common Use Cases

• Authorized penetration tests and bug-bounty recon on assets you own or are contracted to test.
• Continuous security scanning of staging environments with AI-driven triage.
• Security research and tool experimentation without local toolchain setup.
• Ad-hoc vulnerability assessment by consultants who need a portable, reproducible pentest workstation.

Dependencies for Strix Hosting

Deployment Dependencies

• Gemini API key from Google AI Studio — required; set as the GEMINI_API_KEY service variable.
• Docker image wotonews/strix:v0.3.0 (public — no registry credentials needed).
• A Railway volume attached at /workspace for persistent scan storage.

📐 Architecture & Components

graph TD
    Ops([Operator / Railway CLI]) --> RW[strix Service]
    RW --> Vol[(Volume at /workspace)]
    RW --> LLM[Google Gemini API]

📦 Services & Resources Included

The service runs sleep infinity: it is an on-demand worker, not an HTTP server. Attach a Railway volume at /workspace after deployment so scan reports survive restarts and redeploys. Scan reports can contain sensitive target data — restrict project access and delete reports when they are no longer needed.

⚙️ Environment Variables Config

This template uses Google Gemini as its LLM provider.

🔑 Required Variables

🔩 Optional Configurations

🚀 Setup & Deployment Guide

Prerequisites

• Railway CLI Installed (railway on PATH)
• Logged in to your Railway account (railway login)
• A Gemini API key from Google AI Studio

Local Setup

The template ships as a prebuilt image. To run it locally:

docker pull wotonews/strix:v0.3.0
docker run --rm --env GEMINI_API_KEY=your-gemini-api-key wotonews/strix:v0.3.0 strix -n -t https://example.com

To develop against the source instead, build the image yourself:

docker build -t strix-template .
docker run --rm --env GEMINI_API_KEY=your-gemini-api-key strix-template strix -n -t https://example.com

Shipping to Railway

Deploy the prebuilt image — no repository access needed:

# Link to your existing Railway project or initialize a new one
railway init

# Create the service from the published image
railway add --service strix --image wotonews/strix:v0.3.0

# Set the required secret
railway variable set --service strix "GEMINI_API_KEY=your-gemini-api-key"

Then in the Railway dashboard (or CLI), attach a volume to the strix service at /workspace.

🖥️ Executing Scans

Because the container runs completely headless, there is no public web service and intentionally no healthcheck endpoint. Run scans through the Railway CLI:

# 1. Open a shell into the running container
railway ssh

# 2. Run your Strix command
strix -n -t https://example.com

Or execute directly from your local terminal:

railway ssh -- "strix -n -t https://example.com"

Reports are written to /workspace. Retrieve them with:

railway volume browse /
railway volume files download  

🧪 End-to-End (E2E) Testing

This template incorporates its own isolated E2E test suite under e2e/ to guarantee deployment integrity and configuration correctness.

Running Tests Locally

bash e2e/run-tests.sh

CI/CD Integration

- name: Run E2E Integration Suite
  run: bash ./e2e/run-tests.sh

🛠️ Available Tools

The environment includes Strix's sandbox dependencies pre-installed:

• Reconnaissance: Subfinder, Naabu, httpx, Katana, gospider, ffuf, Nmap
• Scanners: Nuclei, SQLMap, Wapiti, ZAP, Trivy
• Secrets: TruffleHog, Gitleaks
• Static Analysis: Semgrep, ast-grep, Bandit, ESLint
• Web Testing: Arjun, Dirsearch, wafw00f, jwt_tool

For custom instructions or advanced configuration, refer to the Official Strix Documentation.