Deploying to Rivet Compute

Steps

• Your RivetKit app in a GitHub repository
  • If you don't have one, see the Quickstart page or our Examples
• A Rivet Cloud account and project

Rivet Compute runs your app as a long-lived container. Make sure your server calls startRunner() instead of serve():

import { registry } from "./actors.js";

registry.startRunner();

See Runtime Modes for details on when to use each mode.

Create a Dockerfile in your project root:

FROM node:24-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --omit=dev
COPY . .
CMD ["node", "src/server.js"]

1. Open the Rivet dashboard and navigate to your project
2. Click Connect and select Rivet Cloud
3. Copy the RIVET_CLOUD_TOKEN value shown — this is all you need for deployment

Add RIVET_CLOUD_TOKEN as a secret in your GitHub repository (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions), then create .github/workflows/deploy.yml:

name: Rivet Deploy

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, closed]
  push:
    branches: [main]
  workflow_dispatch:

concurrency:
  group: rivet-deploy-${{ github.event.pull_request.number || github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

jobs:
  rivet-deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
      pull-requests: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: rivet-dev/deploy-action@v1
        with:
          rivet-token: ${{ secrets.RIVET_CLOUD_TOKEN }}

The deploy-action handles everything automatically:

• Builds your Docker image and pushes it to Rivet's built-in container registry
• Creates a production namespace on pushes to main
• Creates an isolated pr-{number} namespace for each pull request
• Posts a comment on the PR with a link to the Rivet dashboard
• Cleans up the PR namespace when the pull request is closed

The dashboard shows live status as Rivet Compute provisions your backend:

Once the status reaches Ready, your backend is live and actors are available for connections.

Troubleshooting

If the status stays in Provisioning for more than a few minutes, verify that:

• The RIVET_CLOUD_TOKEN secret is correctly set in your GitHub repository
• The GitHub Actions workflow completed without errors — check the run logs

If the status shows Error, check that your container starts successfully and does not exit immediately. Common causes:

• The server file is not calling registry.startRunner()
• A runtime crash on startup — test the image locally with docker run