Deploying to VMs & Bare Metal

Prerequisites

• A Linux VM or bare metal server with SSH access
• Your RivetKit app
  • If you don’t have one, see the Quickstart page or our Examples
• Access to the Rivet Cloud or a self-hosted Rivet Engine

Upload Your App

• Build your RivetKit app locally
• Copy the build output to your server (example):

scp -r ./dist user@server:/opt/rivetkit-app

Place the files somewhere readable by the service user, such as /opt/rivetkit-app.

Set Environment Variables

After creating your project on the Rivet dashboard, select VM & Bare Metal as your provider. You’ll be provided RIVET_ENDPOINT and RIVET_PUBLIC_ENDPOINT environment variables to use in the next step.

Create the systemd Service

Create /etc/systemd/system/rivetkit-app.service:

[Unit]
Description=RivetKit App
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/opt/rivetkit-app
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node server.js
Restart=on-failure
Environment=RIVET_ENDPOINT=<your-rivet-endpoint>
Environment=RIVET_PUBLIC_ENDPOINT=<your-rivet-public-endpoint>

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Replace the environment values with those from the Rivet dashboard and adjust paths to match your deployment.

Start the Service

Reload systemd units and start the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now rivetkit-app.service

Connect to Rivet

1. Ensure your server is accessible via a public URL (e.g. https://my-app.example.com)
2. On the Rivet dashboard, paste your URL with the /api/rivet path into the connect form (e.g. https://my-app.example.com/api/rivet)
3. Click “Done”