RivetKit Real-Time Actor Example on Vercel

Overview

A Vercel-optimized adaptation of the RivetKit “hello world” example: a real-time counter whose state is held in a Rivet Actor and synchronized across all connected clients, deployed via the hono/vercel adapter.

Why It Exists

To evaluate RivetKit’s stateful-actor model on Vercel, exploring how persistent, real-time backend state and event broadcasting behave under a serverless/edge deployment target, using a minimal but complete full-stack example.

What We Built

• An actor definition (src/actors.ts) holding persistent counter state and broadcasting change events.
• A minimal Hono server (src/server.ts) plus a Vercel function entrypoint (api/index.ts) using the hono/vercel adapter.
• A React frontend (frontend/App.tsx) consuming the useActor hook from @rivetkit/react with live event subscriptions.
• Vercel configuration (vercel.json rewrites), Vite build, Turbo, and Vitest setup.

Technologies & Approach

TypeScript across the stack: RivetKit actors for persistent, event-driven state; Hono for the HTTP layer; React + Vite for the client; deployed to Vercel via the Hono adapter. Adapted from the upstream MIT-licensed Rivet example.

Outcome / Impact

Validated that RivetKit’s actor-based real-time state model deploys and runs on Vercel, with multiple actor instances and cross-client synchronization working through the hono/vercel adapter, a useful reference for stateful real-time features on serverless infrastructure.

Capabilities Demonstrated

• Evaluating stateful actor frameworks (RivetKit) on serverless/edge platforms
• Real-time state synchronization and event broadcasting across clients
• Adapting Hono apps to Vercel deployment
• Full-stack TypeScript with React hooks for live backend state