Deployed Kiro Crew to Railway — text my agent from Discord on my phone

[streettj]

I've been using Kiro IDE for a few months on personal projects (a SaaS app on Railway, a static site on Cloudflare Pages). Heavy steering files, custom skills, the whole setup. When Crew dropped on Monday I immediately wanted one thing: a way to text my agent from my phone for quick questions while I'm out, with all my project context loaded up.

Got it working Tuesday night. Kiro Crew running 24/7 on Railway, connected to Discord DMs. I can ask it about my projects, get architecture reminders, do web searches, whatever. Zero cost when I'm not messaging it. Here's how.

What you need

• Kiro account (free tier works)
• Railway account (~$5/mo)
• Discord account + a bot token

The repo

https://github.com/streettj/kiro-crew-railway

Three files: a Dockerfile, a railway.toml, and a config template. The Dockerfile is two lines.

Quick version

1. Create a Discord bot (Developer Portal, no permissions needed, DMs only)
2. Deploy the repo to Railway from GitHub
3. Add env vars: DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN, KIROCREW_ALLOW_UNSANDBOXED=1
4. Attach a volume at /home/kirocrew
5. SSH in once: kiro-cli login --use-device-flow
6. Write your Discord config (enable Discord, add your user ID to the allow-list)
7. Redeploy. DM the bot.

Full step-by-step is in the repo README.

Custom skills

After the bot is running, you can upload SKILL.md files to give it persistent context about your projects. I have four: a core identity/preferences skill (always-on), and three triggered skills for my different projects that only load when I mention relevant keywords. Saves credits on every turn.

Upload directly to the volume from the Railway CLI without SSH:

railway volume files --volume YOUR_VOLUME upload ./my-skill /.kiro/crew/skills/my-skill

Gotchas

• Railway volumes mount as root. The base image runs as uid 1000. Fix: USER root in your Dockerfile.
• kiro-cli stores credentials at ~/.local/share/kiro-cli/. Set ENV HOME=/home/kirocrew so they land on the volume.
• No healthcheck in railway.toml. The service has no public port.
• Discord bots need a shared server before you can DM them. Create a personal server, add the bot.
• The entrypoint writes its own config.json on first boot. Write yours after, then redeploy.
• Don't write skill files with PowerShell's Set-Content. The BOM breaks YAML frontmatter.

What it costs

• Railway: ~$5/mo (container idles at almost nothing)
• Kiro credits: only when you message it. Free tier = ~15-25 questions/mo.
• Discord: free

Would love to see other people's setups or any feedback!