Deploy and Host ZeroClaw on Railway

ZeroClaw is a personal AI assistant and gateway built in Rust, with a web dashboard, multi-channel integrations, and persistent workspace state. This Railway template deploys a thin wrapper around the official ZeroClaw Debian image, adds a persistent volume, and exposes the public gateway so users can get to a working dashboard quickly and then configure providers, channels, and workflows.

About Hosting ZeroClaw

This template runs ZeroClaw as a single Railway service using a local Dockerfile built from the official ghcr.io/zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw:debian image. The small wrapper ensures the /zeroclaw-data volume is initialized correctly on first boot, then ZeroClaw starts with a Railway-friendly public gateway config. The service stores its config and workspace under /zeroclaw-data, which is backed by a Railway volume so restarts and redeploys do not wipe the assistant state.

Common Use Cases

• Launch a personal AI assistant with a persistent web dashboard
• Run a lightweight Rust-based agent gateway without managing servers manually
• Prototype channel integrations and remote-control workflows
• Host a long-lived ZeroClaw control plane with Railway-managed deploys and storage

Dependencies for ZeroClaw Hosting

• ZeroClaw official Debian container image
• Railway persistent volume for config and workspace data
• A supported LLM provider API key
• Railway public networking for the dashboard and gateway

Deployment Dependencies

• ZeroClaw repository: https://github.com/zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw
• ZeroClaw docs: https://github.com/zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw/tree/master/docs
• Railway volumes: https://docs.railway.com/guides/volumes
• Railway templates: https://docs.railway.com/templates/create

Implementation Details

API_KEY=""
ZEROCLAW_PROVIDER="openrouter"
PORT="42617"
ZEROCLAW_GATEWAY_PORT="42617"

The template is provisioned with an API key placeholder and then cleaned up in the Railway template editor so deployers are prompted for their own provider key. The rest of the service is preconfigured for a clean first boot on Railway, including a real /health endpoint for Railway healthchecks.