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XMTP status

Deploy your agent built with XMTP

This guide covers how to deploy an agent using Railway—a platform many developers prefer for quickly and easily deploying agents. While this tutorial focuses on Railway, you can use any hosting provider that supports Node.js and environment variables.

Alternative platforms include:

  • Heroku
  • Fly.io
  • Render
  • Vercel

Want to contribute a guide for another platform? We welcome pull requests!

1. Create a Railway account

Sign up for an account at Railway if you don't already have one.

2. Start a new project

From your Railway dashboard, click New Project and select Empty Project.

Railway New Project Screen

3. Import your agent's GitHub repository

Click Deploy from GitHub repo and select the repository that contains your agent code.

Import GitHub Repository

4. Configure volume storage

Your XMTP agent will need persistent storage. Add a volume to your container:

  1. Navigate to your service settings.

  2. Select the Volumes tab.

  3. Add a new volume and specify the mount path.

    Adding a Volume

Use this code in your agent to properly connect to the Railway volume:

export const getDbPath = (env: string, suffix: string = "xmtp") => {
  //Checks if the environment is a Railway deployment
  const volumePath = process.env.RAILWAY_VOLUME_MOUNT_PATH ?? ".data/xmtp";
  // Create database directory if it doesn't exist
  if (!fs.existsSync(volumePath)) {
    fs.mkdirSync(volumePath, { recursive: true });
  }
  const dbPath = `${volumePath}/${env}-${suffix}.db3`;
 
  return dbPath;
};

Then, specify dbPath in your client options:

const receiverClient = await Client.create(signer, {
    dbEncryptionKey,
    env: XMTP_ENV as XmtpEnv,
    dbPath: getDbPath(XMTP_ENV),
  });

5. Configure environment variables

  1. Get the connection string for your database.

    Get Redis Connection String

  2. Add the connection string and any other required environment variables to your service.

    Environment Variables Editor

6. Deploy your agent

Once all configurations are set, Railway will automatically deploy your agent. You can monitor the deployment process on the Deployments tab.

7. Share your agent (optional)

Consider registering an ENS domain for your agent to make it easy to share and access.

Example Railway deployment

For reference, here's an example Railway deployment of a gm-bot agent.