Infrastructure for
software that thinks.

Each Rivet Actor has built in:

In-memory statePersistent storageWorkflowsSchedulingWebSocketsRuns indefinitelySleeps when idle

for coding agents

AI broke the way we build backends.

Long-running tasks, persistent sessions, real-time streaming — AI apps need all of it. So teams stitch together 7+ services just to ship one feature.

The status quo

session stateRedis

persistencePostgres

job queuesKafka

workflowsTemporal

real-time streamingSocket.io

background computeLong-running workers

sleep, wake, retriesCustom logic

7 services. Weeks of integration.

One Actor

session stateActor (State)

persistenceActor (Storage)

workflowsActor (Workflows)

job queuesActor (Scheduling)

real-time streamingActor (WebSockets)

background computeActor (Long-running)

sleep, wake, retriesActor (Lifecycle)

One lightweight primitive. All the capabilities.

How Actors work.

Define state, write a run loop, broadcast events. That's it.

actor.ts

1actor({

2state: { messages: [], history: [] },

4run: async (c) => {

5while (true) {

6const message = await c.queue.next("message");

7const response = await ai(message);

8c.state.history.push({ message, response });

9c.broadcast("response", response);

10}

11},

12});

Define the Actor

An Actor is an independent process with its own isolated state. Create one per user, per agent, or per session.

actor({

});

Declare State

State is automatically persisted and loaded into memory when the Actor wakes. No database queries. No ORM. Just an object.

state: { messages: [], history: [] },

Process Messages

The run loop executes continuously. Wait for messages from a queue, process them with your logic. The Actor stays alive as long as it needs to.

run: async (c) => {

while (true) {

const message = await c.queue.next("message");

const response = await ai(message);

c.state.history.push({ message, response });

Broadcast in Real-time

Push updates to all connected clients instantly. WebSockets and SSE are built in — no Socket.io, no pub/sub layer, just one line.

c.broadcast("response", response);

}

Runs where you do.

Rivet Actors integrate with your existing infrastructure, frameworks, runtimes, and tools.

Built-In Observability

Powerful debugging and monitoring tools that work seamlessly from local development to production at scale.

Visit The Inspector

Live State Inspection

View and edit your actor state in real-time as messages are sent and processed

Network Inspector

Monitor active connections with state and parameters for each client

Event Monitoring

See all events happening in your actor in real-time and track every state change and action as it happens

REPL

Debug your actor in real-time by calling actions, subscribing to events, and interacting directly with your code

Start local. Scale to millions.

Three options, same API. Pick what works for you.

Self-Host

Single Rust binary or Docker container. Works with Postgres, file system, or FoundationDB. Full dashboard included.

$docker run -p 6420:6420 rivetkit/engine

View Self-Hosting Docs

Rivet Cloud

Fully managed. Global edge network. Connects to your existing cloud — Vercel, Railway, AWS, wherever you already deploy.

Global Edge Network
Scales Seamlessly
Connects To Your Cloud

Open Source

Apache 2.0. Audit the code, contribute features, run it however you want.

$git clone https://github.com/rivet-dev/rivet

$cd rivet

$cargo run -p rivet-engine

View on GitHub