Name: Tallylamp
Availability: InStock
Author: nxfi777

Deploy and Host Tallylamp on Railway

Give your AI agent a browser you can watch and take over.

Tallylamp gives your agent full, headed Chrome with a display and Chrome's normal user agent. Each browser saves its own profile by default, including cookies, logins, and local storage. Your agent can come back to that profile for its next task instead of starting with an empty browser.

Your agent drives the browser through MCP. You can watch the same browser live, take control to sign in or finish a verification step, then return it to the agent. Websites can still expire logins or ask you to sign in again.

Tallylamp is open source under the MIT license. You pay Railway for the infrastructure your deployment uses.

About Hosting Tallylamp

One prebuilt container with Chrome, Xvfb, and Node.js, plus a persistent volume at /data. The volume holds browser profiles and the SQLite database. The service provides an authenticated dashboard and an MCP endpoint at /mcp.

The template generates a unique ADMIN_SECRET for each deployment. After deploying, copy that value from your service's Railway variables, open the public domain, and use it to sign into the dashboard.

Why Deploy Tallylamp on Railway?

Railway provisions the service, HTTPS domain, and persistent volume in your workspace. The template supplies the healthcheck and a generated dashboard password. You choose when to upgrade the application.

Common Use Cases

Keep a browser profile ready for an agent's recurring tasks.
Take control to sign in, then let the agent continue.
Let a colleague clear a 2FA prompt in one browser.
Watch a browser live to see what the agent is doing.
Test pages with different user agents, mobile or desktop viewports, touch input, and locations through MCP's emulate tool.
Give one browser its own HTTP or HTTPS proxy without changing the others.
Finish an OAuth flow whose redirect URI is http://localhost:PORT/…, through a short-lived loopback tunnel to one private address on your machine. Agents need a scope they do not get by default.
Install a Chrome extension from the Web Store in Full browser.
Share a tab from your own Chrome, logins included, with your agent.
Let an agent see one of your browsers, read only, once you approve.

Dependencies for Tallylamp

The public Linux amd64 image includes Node.js 22, Google Chrome, Xvfb, ffmpeg, and xdotool. SQLite runs in the same container; there is no separate database service to set up.

Deployment Dependencies

A Railway account with enough memory for the browsers you run.
A persistent volume mounted at /data, configured by the template.
The generated ADMIN_SECRET from your service's variables, used to sign in.

Connect your agent

For a client that accepts bearer tokens, create an agent in the dashboard. Copy its token and configure the client with https://YOUR_HOST/mcp and an Authorization: Bearer YOUR_AGENT_TOKEN header.

For a client that requires OAuth, sign into the dashboard first, add the same MCP URL to your client, and approve the connection on Tallylamp's consent page. The connector gets its own agent permissions and browser cap.

Ask your agent to create a browser and open a site. Choose Watch in the dashboard to see it, Take control to use it yourself, and Return to agent when you're done. Tallylamp blocks agent actions that change the browser while you have control.

Chrome extensions

Tab view is the page. Full browser is Chrome's toolbar and dialogs. Take control, then switch to Full browser to install from the Chrome Web Store. New browsers have the Extensions switch on already; if it was turned off, stop the browser and turn it back on first.

Chrome's own UI can open files on the host and change browser settings. An installed extension can read signed-in pages. Use this only with administrators and extensions you trust.

Allow agent control is a separate toggle. It lets the owning agent see and use that native UI, including settings and host-file dialogs. New agent-owned browsers start with it on. Set TALLYLAMP_AGENT_DESKTOP_DEFAULT=0 if you do not trust every new agent-owned browser with that access.

Use your own browser

Your agent can also use a tab in your own Chrome, Edge, Brave or other Chromium browser. Download Tallylamp Link, unzip it and load it at chrome://extensions with Developer mode on. Enter your Railway domain in its side panel, approve the code in the dashboard, then share a tab. It connects out to your domain, so Railway needs no extra setup.

The agent gets only the tabs you share and acts as you inside them. The extension blocks the browser-wide cookie jar, other tabs and local files. You can take a tab back at any time. It never shares your Tallylamp dashboard. Firefox and Safari cannot be linked.

Let someone else sign in

Share with a person… on a browser's page makes a single-use link to that one browser, for a colleague who must clear a 2FA prompt. Revoke it any time; the audit log records what they do. A guest can use every login saved in that browser, so share one that holds only what they need.

Reach localhost on your own machine

Chrome runs in the Railway container, so localhost inside the browser means the container. A redirect to http://localhost:PORT/callback ends there, and the app waiting on your machine never sees it.

A loopback tunnel binds one browser to one private host:port on your machine. Your machine dials out, with no new listener and no public URL. Only the browser's owner or an administrator can open one, and an agent also needs the browser:tunnel scope. A tunnel expires after an hour by default. While it is open, any page in that browser can reach that address, so close it when the job is done. The tunnel guide has the command to run on your machine.

Use a proxy for one browser

Enter the proxy server and optional login in New browser, or stop a browser and choose Configure beside Proxy. The API and MCP tools accept the same settings, and Railway needs no shared proxy variable or credential.

Settings persist on /data but are not copied into saved profile templates. HTTP and HTTPS CONNECT proxies are supported; SOCKS and PAC are not. DNS stays on the server, loopback tunnels keep their own route, and proxy failures never fall back to direct access.

Proxy credentials are hidden from API responses but stored unencrypted in SQLite. Protect the volume and its backups, and prefer an HTTPS proxy so the proxy login is encrypted in transit. The proxy guide covers connection limits. A proxy is not a VPN or a guarantee that sites will accept automation.

Updates are your choice

The current release is ghcr.io/nxfi777/tallylamp:0.8.5. Pin this digest:

ghcr.io/nxfi777/tallylamp@sha256:2249f50395670f789eea0fe408da742f2f7f65af46e71c7da2590e65aba44801

Automatic image updates are disabled. Pushing source code or publishing a new release does not upgrade your deployment.

To upgrade, read the release notes, back up your /data volume, then change the image reference in Railway to that digest and deploy it.

What to expect

Chrome runs in headed mode, not headless mode. Xvfb gives it a display inside the container. User-agent and device emulation let you test browser settings; they do not make an agent behave like a person.

Persistent browsers keep their own data automatically across stops and redeploys. Record signed-in site only adds an inventory note for agents; it does not sign you in or copy cookies. Edit browser details changes its name and metadata.

Save profile creates a reusable snapshot, or updates the browser's linked profile. Save as new profile creates a separate snapshot. Existing browsers stay independent; updates affect future copies only. A snapshot contains all saved logins, not just the sites listed in the inventory.

Agents can load, modify, and update profiles through MCP. Enable loading and saving separately under Agents → Profile permissions. Saving requires seed:write; borrowing a browser never permits exporting its logins. Saved profiles contain every login, so share them only with agents you trust.

Site badges show detected or reported sign-ins, not every saved login.

Railway limits a container to 1,000 processes and threads, and each Chrome uses 230–420, so two or three browsers run at once. Tallylamp refuses a start past that.

A volume-backed deployment uses one replica. Redeploys interrupt active browsers; their profiles remain, and Chrome starts again on the next use. Railway provides no GPU for this service, and Chrome's renderer sandbox may be unavailable. The dashboard reports both states. Browsers share the container's isolation boundary.

Tallylamp does not bypass CAPTCHAs or guarantee that sites will accept automation.