Deploy and Host WACrew on Railway

WACrew is an open-source WhatsApp AI agent. It connects to your own WhatsApp account by QR code, keeps the history of the chats you pick in a web panel, and lets AI clients like Claude and Cursor use them through an MCP server. Every reply the agent writes goes through a review before it is sent, at a human pace.

About Hosting WACrew

WACrew only records what arrives while it is running, so it needs to stay online. This template runs the prebuilt image ghcr.io/sumioshi/wacrew as a single service with a volume at /data, where the WhatsApp session, messages and media live. Redeploys and image updates keep that volume, so you scan the QR code once. The panel has a login. The username is admin, and the password is generated for you in the PANEL_PASS variable. After the deploy, open the public URL, sign in, go to /config, scan the QR code and pick the chats to follow.

Common Use Cases

Give Claude or Cursor read and reply access to your WhatsApp through MCP
Keep a searchable history of client groups, with media and audio transcripts
Let an AI agent answer routine messages while you review anything sensitive

Dependencies for WACrew Hosting

A WhatsApp account to link (personal or Business app)
Optional: an OpenRouter API key in OPENROUTER_API_KEY to transcribe audio

Implementation Details

To use the cloud panel from your local AI client, install the MCP package and point it at your Railway URL:

WAC_CLOUD_URL=https://.up.railway.app WAC_CLOUD_USER=admin WAC_CLOUD_PASS= npx -y wacrew-mcp

Source code, docs and the MCP tool list: https://github.com/sumioshi/wacrew

Why Deploy WACrew 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 WACrew 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.