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Choose railpack for source detection when a Dockerfile is unnecessary. The manifest pins the Railpack version and frontend image, selects a repository context, and may provide railpack.json for project-specific configuration.

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Example manifest

This is the validated example from the Towbar examples/platform-modes project. Replace the documentation IP, domain, and image choices with values for your environment.
.towbar/apps/railpack.app.yml

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Configure it

The example pins an amd64 builder and sends only examples/platform-modes/node-app as its context. container.port and health.path still describe the finished runtime container. Review the generated build result before enabling automatic deployment. Railpack builds reject build secrets so credentials cannot enter a layer or shared cache. Use the Dockerfile mode if the build itself must authenticate to a private dependency. Map the named environment to a branch, register and prepare its server, then sync the repository. Start with a manual deployment and verify the running service before opting into automation. See Application manifest for shared fields and Deployment modes to compare modes.
Last modified on September 26, 2026