Installation

Prerequisites

• Railway account — sign up here
• PostHog account with a personal API key — generate one at PostHog > Settings > Personal API Keys (starts with phx_)
• Resend account — sign up free, grab your API key

Deploy to Railway (1 click)

Click the button below to deploy the full Hogsend stack on Railway:

The template provisions everything:

• hogsend-api — the HTTP API
• hogsend-worker — Hatchet worker for durable journey execution
• Hatchet-Lite — workflow orchestration engine
• Postgres 18 — event store, journey state, contacts
• Postgres 16 — Hatchet's internal database
• Redis 8 — PostHog property caching

You'll be asked for two values during deploy:

Railway auto-wires DATABASE_URL and REDIS_URL between services. Wait for the deploy to complete (~3 minutes).

Configure with the CLI

Install the Hogsend CLI:

# macOS (Apple Silicon)
curl -L https://github.com/dougwithseismic/hogsend/releases/latest/download/hogsend_darwin_arm64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv hogsend /usr/local/bin/

# macOS (Intel)
curl -L https://github.com/dougwithseismic/hogsend/releases/latest/download/hogsend_darwin_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv hogsend /usr/local/bin/

# Linux (amd64)
curl -L https://github.com/dougwithseismic/hogsend/releases/latest/download/hogsend_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv hogsend /usr/local/bin/

Then run the interactive setup:

hogsend init

The CLI will:

1. Connect to your Railway project and discover your services
2. Connect to PostHog and list your projects
3. Generate all secrets (BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, POSTHOG_WEBHOOK_SECRET, ADMIN_API_KEY)
4. Set environment variables on your API and Worker services
5. Create a PostHog webhook destination with the right URL, headers, and event matchers
6. Redeploy your services
7. Wait for the API to become healthy
8. Fire a test event and verify the full pipeline works

You'll need:

• A Railway API token — generate at railway.com/account/tokens
• Your PostHog personal API key — the phx_ key from PostHog > Settings > Personal API Keys

Everything else is automatic.

Verify

# Check deployment health
hogsend status

# Fire a test event through the full pipeline
hogsend test

The test command sends a synthetic event to /v1/ingest/, waits for it to be stored, and confirms the pipeline is working end-to-end.

Write your first journey

You're ready. Head to Journeys to define your first lifecycle flow, or explore the example journeys that ship with the repo.

Local development (for contributors)

If you want to develop Hogsend locally instead of deploying to Railway:

1. Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/dougwithseismic/hogsend.git
cd hogsend
pnpm install

2. Start infrastructure

docker compose up -d

This boots TimescaleDB (port 5434), Redis (port 6380), and Hatchet-Lite (dashboard at localhost:8888).

3. Configure environment

cp apps/api/.env.example apps/api/.env

Fill in BETTER_AUTH_SECRET (run openssl rand -hex 32), RESEND_API_KEY, POSTHOG_API_KEY, and POSTHOG_HOST.

4. Run migrations and start

cd packages/db && pnpm db:migrate && cd ../..

# Terminal 1: API server
pnpm dev

# Terminal 2: Hatchet worker
cd apps/api && hatchet worker dev

Or use the CLI shortcut:

hogsend setup   # checks prereqs, starts Docker, installs deps, creates .env