The primitive for
software that thinks.
Rivet Actors are a serverless primitive for stateful workloads.
The Thinker
Auguste Rodin · modeled 1880
The Rivet Actor is built for modern stateful workloads.
One Actor per agent, per session, per user — each with everything it needs built in.
Co-located with compute for instant reads and writes.
Persistent storage that survives restarts and deploys.
Long-lived when active, hibernates when idle.
Supports bursty workloads and is cost-efficient.
Real-time bidirectional streaming built in.
Multi-step operations with automatic retries.
Durable message queues for reliable async processing.
Timers and cron jobs within your actor.
See it in action.
One primitive that adapts to agents, workflows, collaboration, and more.
// One actor per agent
const agent = actor({
// State is persisted automatically
state: { messages: [], memory: {} },
actions: {
chat: (c, message) => {
c.state.messages.push(message);
const response = await c.llm.chat(c.state);
c.state.memory = response.memory;
return response.text;
},
},
});const agent = client.agent.get("agent-123");
const reply = await agent.chat("Hello!");Each agent runs as its own actor with persistent context, memory, and the ability to schedule tool calls.
How Actors work.
Define state, write a run loop, broadcast events.
Define the Actor
An Actor is an independent process with its own isolated state. Create one per user, per agent, or per session.
Declare State
State is automatically persisted and loaded into memory when the Actor wakes. No database queries. No ORM. Just an object.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Infrastructure for software that thinks.
The next generation of software needs a new kind of backend. This is it.