railway-deploy - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: Railway Deploy description: Skill for deploying Gravity Claw to Railway with the standard pause → test → deploy → verify cycle.

Railway Deploy Skill

Overview

Gravity Claw is deployed to Railway using Docker. The Railway CLI manages deployments, environment variables, and logs.

Key Rules

Always pause Railway before local testing. Two bot instances polling the same Telegram token will fight over messages.
Always type-check before deploying. Run npx tsc --noEmit to catch errors.
Railway filesystem is ephemeral. The data/ directory (dashboard settings, activity logs) resets on every deploy. Use environment variables for persistent config.

Deployment Commands

Task	Command
Pause live bot	`railway down`
Start local dev	`npm run dev`
Type-check	`npx tsc --noEmit`
Deploy	`railway up --detach`
View logs	`railway logs --lines 100`
Set env var	`railway variables set KEY="value"`
List env vars	`railway variables`
Open dashboard	`railway open`

Environment Variables Required

These must be set on Railway (not committed to code):

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN — from @BotFather
GROQ_API_KEY — from console.groq.com
ALLOWED_USER_IDS — comma-separated Telegram user IDs

Deployment Workflow

Use the /deploy workflow command to run the full cycle:

1. railway down          (pause live service)
2. npx tsc --noEmit      (type-check)
3. railway up --detach   (deploy)
4. railway logs --lines 40  (verify)

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
Build failed	Check `railway logs --lines 100` for npm/TypeScript errors
Bot crashes on startup	Missing env vars — run `railway variables`
Messages going to wrong place	Two instances running — `railway down` first
Need rollback	Fix locally, then `railway up --detach` again

Files Deployed (via Dockerfile)

src/, tsconfig.json, package.json, package-lock.json

Files NOT Deployed (via .dockerignore)

.env, node_modules/, data/, .agent/, .git/