Deploying to Rivet Compute

Source: src/content/docs/deploy/rivet-compute.mdx Canonical URL: https://rivet.dev/docs/deploy/rivet-compute Description: Run your backend on Rivet Compute.

Rivet Compute is currently in beta.

Using an AI coding agent? Open Connect on the Rivet dashboard, select Rivet Cloud, and paste the one-shot prompt into your agent and have it connect with Rivet Compute for you.

Steps

Prerequisites

Your RivetKit app
- If you don't have one, see the Quickstart page or our Examples
A Rivet Cloud account and project
Docker running locally

Create a Dockerfile

Add a Dockerfile to your project root that builds and runs your RivetKit server:

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

Get Your Cloud Token

Open the Rivet dashboard and navigate to your project
Click Connect and select Rivet Cloud
Copy the RIVET_CLOUD_TOKEN value shown

Deploy

Run the deploy command from your project root. The token is saved to ~/.rivet/credentials, so later deploys can omit it.

npx @rivetkit/cli deploy --token cloud_api_xxxxx

The CLI resolves your project from the token, builds and pushes your Docker image to Rivet's built-in registry, upserts the managed pool, and prints the deployment URL on stdout when the pool is ready.

Optionally Add CI

After local deploys work, install the GitHub Actions workflow that deploys on every push and pull request:

npx @rivetkit/cli setup-ci

This writes .github/workflows/rivet-deploy.yml. Add your token as a repository secret to enable it:

gh secret set RIVET_CLOUD_TOKEN

The workflow creates production and pull-request namespaces, posts preview links, and cleans up PR namespaces when pull requests close. See the CLI reference for all commands.

Monitor Deployment

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

Status	Description
Provisioning	Allocating compute resources
Initializing	Starting the runtime environment
Allocating	Assigning the runner to your pool
Deploying	Pulling and launching your container
Binding	Connecting the runner to the network
Ready	Deployment complete

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

If you are an agent monitoring the deployment via API rather than the dashboard, poll the managed-pool endpoint on the Cloud API.

The RIVET_CLOUD_TOKEN secret is a cloud_api_* management token scoped to the Cloud API at cloud-api.rivet.dev. Use it for Authorization: Bearer ... against the Cloud API. Do not confuse it with a pk_* publishable key, which is scoped to the Rivet Engine API at api.rivet.dev and will 401 against this endpoint.

Substitute $CLOUD_API_URL (typically https://cloud-api.rivet.dev), $PROJECT, $ORG, $CLOUD_NAMESPACE, and $CLOUD_TOKEN.

Poll every 5 seconds until status is ready. Stop and investigate if status is error.

curl -s "$CLOUD_API_URL/projects/$PROJECT/namespaces/$CLOUD_NAMESPACE/managed-pools/default?org=$ORG" -H "Authorization: Bearer $CLOUD_TOKEN"

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
The Dockerfile is not listening on the PORT environmental variable

Source doc path: /docs/deploy/rivet-compute

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