🏗️ Architecture: Should we consolidate all 4 Railway API projects into a sing...

Date: 2026-02-19
Time: 14:30:10 UTC
Session: gspace1-121.122
Agent: backend
Confidence: 95%
Status: ✅ Documented

📋 Decision Context

Question:

Should we consolidate all 4 Railway API projects into a single project?

Task: Session 121: Railway consolidation + Redis for all 4 APIs

🎯 Decision Made

Chosen:

Consolidate all 4 APIs + Redis into 1 Railway project

Options Considered:

1. Keep 4 separate Railway projects (current state)
2. Consolidate all 4 APIs + Redis into 1 Railway project
3. Partial consolidation (group related APIs only)

💭 Reasoning

Railway explicitly recommends grouping related services in a single project. Benefits: (1) Shared Redis via private networking (zero egress, ~0.2ms vs ~5-15ms), (2) Inter-service communication via internal DNS without public URL exposure, (3) Reference variables for shared config, (4) Zero egress fees for service-to-service traffic. No performance downside -- services remain independent containers with separate compute, scaling, and deployment. Current 4-project layout prevents Redis sharing via private networking, forcing public URL exposure (slower, insecure, egress costs). Confirmed via Railway docs: private networking is scoped to a single environment within a project.

📁 Files Involved

• .env.local
• apis/backend-api/
• apis/backend-ai-api/
• apis/backend-docs-api/
• apis/backend-vitto-api/

🔗 Related

• Decision ID: dev_1771511410215_ftb6jeh
• Session: 121
• Workspace: gspace1

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