# Rivet

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/rivet/ · added 2026-11-06 · updated 2026-11-06

**In short.** Rivet (AI design agent that runs inside coding agents and builds many design directions in parallel, United States): Live design agent with weekly releases from YC Fall 2025, November 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 1 founder (Sam Gorman, Founder/CEO) on the Y Combinator page; headcount not published; the site says the team is early and hiring founding members (November 2026). Launched 29 October 2025; still running.

AI design agent that runs inside coding agents and builds many design directions in parallel · United States · AI-native · solo founder · still running · group: Developer tools and coding agents

- Outcome: Live design agent with weekly releases from YC Fall 2025, November 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: E; no revenue figure)
- Launch: 29 October 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 13
- Team: 1 founder (Sam Gorman, Founder/CEO) on the Y Combinator page; headcount not published; the site says the team is early and hiring founding members (November 2026)
- Outside funding: Y Combinator, Fall 2025 batch; amount not published
- Main factor: Timing
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 2
- Tags: AI-native, Solo founder, Funded, Running, B2B, Design tools

Links:

- Visit rivet.design: https://rivet.design/

**The product.** Rivet is a design agent that a person installs into a coding agent: Codex, Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Cursor. The person asks the coding agent for a screen or a change, and Rivet builds several different design directions of it in parallel as live previews in the real project. The person compares them, asks for changes and tells the agent to build the chosen one. Design references can come from Pinterest boards, Are.na channels, websites, images and videos. No prices are published.

**Why it worked.** Coding agents can now write front-end code, but they usually produce one answer to one prompt. Rivet's own story page says designers 'have to leave great ideas unexplored' because there is not enough time to prototype every direction. Rivet uses the coding agent to try many directions at once, so the cost of one more idea is machine time instead of a designer's day.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Rivet is an agent plugin, an add-on that a coding agent such as Claude Code or Cursor can call as a tool. It installs with one command and registers an MCP server, a small local program that speaks the Model Context Protocol, the standard way for an AI agent to call outside tools. When the user asks for a design, Rivet starts several worker agents that each build a different variant, one full version of the design in the real code, and shows them side by side.

Sam Gorman, a former early product engineer at Snorkel AI who started his career as a product designer, founded it in 2025 and launched it in Y Combinator's Fall 2025 batch. The first launch post, on 29 October 2025, sold a different idea: a visual editor in which a designer points at an element of a live app, changes it and pushes the code. By 2026 the product had moved to exploring many directions from inside the coding agent, with about 158 releases between February and November 2026 in its public change log.

No revenue figure was found. The evidence on this page is that the company is real, live and shipping: the Y Combinator pages, the product's own site and documentation, and the dated release notes. The site does not publish prices; older release notes speak of Rivet credits and an upgrade message.

## Pricing

Rivet prices in November 2026: not published (grade C); the site and documentation read on 6 November 2026 show no price list

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid use with Rivet credits | not published | not published | credit limit and upgrade message in release notes, February and March 2026 |
| Y Combinator launch offer, October 2025 |  |  | fast track off the waitlist and a discount; amount not stated |

The home page offers a download and an install command. The terms of service, in the site's code, speak of purchases and a subscription fee but give no amounts. Release notes of February and March 2026 mention a Rivet credit limit and a message that helps users who run out of credits to upgrade. The October 2025 launch post offered Y Combinator companies a fast track off the waitlist and a discount, without an amount.

## How much revenue does Rivet make? The numbers, graded

A one-founder Y Combinator company with a live design agent and no published revenue or prices

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Status, November 2026 | live; latest release 0.26.2 on 4 November 2026 | C | Rivet's release notes. The home page, read on 6 November 2026, offers install commands for Codex, Claude, Claude Code and Cursor. | [4, 1] |
| Founded | 2025, San Francisco | C | Y Combinator company page, which lists the batch as Fall 2025 and the status as Active. | [2] |
| Founder | Sam Gorman, Founder/CEO | C | Y Combinator company page: previously an early engineer leading product engineering teams at Snorkel AI; studied product design and computer science at Stanford. | [2] |
| Team | headcount not published | C | The Y Combinator page lists one founder and no team size. The site's story page says 'We're an early, spirited team in San Francisco now hiring for founding members'. | [2, 5] |
| First launch post | 29 October 2025, 48 votes | C | Y Combinator launch post 'Rivet - Burn down your design backlog', a visual editor that pushes code changes to the customer's repository. | [3] |
| Releases in the public change log | 158, from 18 February 2026 to 4 November 2026 | calc | Calculated: count of version entries in the release notes page read on 6 November 2026. | [4] |
| Supported coding agents | Cursor, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, OpenAI Codex CLI | C | Documentation home and install guide. | [6] |
| Model used by the design workers | the model of the user's Claude Code or Codex session, since 14 October 2026 | C | Release 0.21.6. Earlier defaults were Claude Sonnet 4.6 (February 2026), Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7, and Opus 4.8 in the desktop app (June 2026). | [4] |
| Prices | not published | C | No pricing page; credits and an upgrade message appear in the February and March 2026 release notes. | [4, 1] |
| Time from launch post to the November 2026 status | 13 months | calc | Calculated: October 2025 to November 2026. | [3, 4] |

How to read this table: grade C values come from the company's own pages or its founder; there are no A or B values. A "calc" value was computed on this page.

## When did Rivet launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a visual editor for designers to a design agent inside coding agents, in about a year. Each entry carries its grade.

- **2025** (grade C [2]): Sam Gorman founds Rivet in San Francisco and joins Y Combinator's Fall 2025 batch.
- **29 October 2025** (grade C [3]): Launch post on Y Combinator: a visual editor in which product designers change elements of their live app and Rivet pushes the code to the repository. Y Combinator companies get a fast track off the waitlist.
- **February 2026** (grade C [4]): The public change log starts with version 0.2.16. Release notes mention Rivet credits and an upgrade message for users who run out.
- **March 2026** (grade C [4]): Rivet works inside Claude, Cursor and Codex through MCP.
- **April to September 2026** (grade C [4]): Design variants run in parallel in separate worktrees; Pinterest and Are.na references are added; the separate desktop app is removed on 6 September 2026.
- **October to November 2026** (grade C [4]): Design workers use the user's own agent model, the hosted planner is no longer needed for fresh runs, and Rivet stops writing designs into the project itself. Version 0.26.2 ships on 4 November 2026.

## Why did Rivet work?

### Timing

Rivet arrived when coding agents became good enough to build real front-end code, and it sits on top of them instead of competing with them. A designer who already uses Claude Code or Cursor gets a new way to explore without a new editor.

### Many directions instead of one answer

Each request starts several workers that build different versions in the real code, each in its own git worktree, a separate working copy of the same repository. Comparing live previews replaces drawing mock-ups that an engineer later rebuilds.

### Fast public iteration

The release notes show about 158 versions in under nine months, including a change of the whole product idea from a point-and-edit visual editor to direction exploration.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's documentation, release notes and site. They are grade C.

- Distributed as an npm package, rivet-design, installed with npx; install registers an MCP server and a Rivet skill for each supported coding agent.
- Variant workers ran on Anthropic models (Sonnet 4.6, then Opus 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8 as defaults) and since October 2026 run on the model of the user's own Claude Code or Codex session.
- Each variant runs in a separate git worktree with a live preview on a local port.
- The site is a React single-page app; the privacy notice names PostHog for analytics and session recordings. Documentation is hosted on Mintlify.

Sources: [4, 6, 1]

## Who tried this before Rivet, and why did they fail?

Three companies in our database of failed startups tried to close the gap between design and working code. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Invision (2011 to 2023; funding US$350M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Interactive prototypes and a smoother handoff from designers to developers.
- Why it died: Figma's browser-based, real-time tool took the market, and Invision did not change quickly enough.
- Record: 

### Pixate (2012 to 2016; funding US$3.6M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Native mobile app prototypes without writing code.
- Why it died: Bought by Google and then not developed further, while web-based, collaborative tools won.
- Record: 

### Haiku (2018 to 2021; funding US$1.2M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Animations made by designers that go straight into the codebase.
- Why it died: Figma and Adobe XD added prototyping features, and the company could not raise more money in 2020.
- Record: 

## What changed

All three built a separate design tool that tried to produce code, and lost when the main design tools added the same features. Rivet does not ask designers to move into a new canvas: it runs inside the coding agent that already writes the code, so the output is the code itself and not a file to hand over.

The cost of trying a design direction also changed. With AI workers, ten directions cost machine time instead of ten days of work, which is the idea behind the product. The same fact is a risk: the coding agents it runs inside can add the feature themselves.

## Can one person copy Rivet now?

**Verdict: The pattern, yes. The product, with care.**

One person can build a plugin that adds a missing job to coding agents through MCP and skills, without building a model or an editor. Rivet shows the speed this needs: many small releases and a willingness to change the product idea.

1. Pick one job that coding agents do badly, such as exploring several options instead of one.
2. Ship it as an MCP server and agent skill that installs with one command into the agents people already use.
3. Let the user's own agent model do the work, so model cost does not sit with you.
4. Release in public, often, and write release notes in plain words.

**What is still open.** Other jobs that coding agents do as one guess: copywriting variants, onboarding flows, data dashboards, accessibility checks.

## What could go wrong for Rivet?

- **What is not verified.** No revenue figure was found. We looked for a payment-processor profile, a founder interview with numbers, a published price list and a funding announcement with an amount, and found none. The Y Combinator pages, the site and the release notes show only that the product is live and shipping. A reader could look for a later Y Combinator update, a founder post with customer or revenue numbers, or a public price list.
- **Dependence on model providers and agent hosts.** Rivet runs inside Codex, Claude Code, Claude Desktop and Cursor, and its workers used Anthropic's Claude models as defaults before switching on 14 October 2026 to the user's own session model (release notes). If those agent makers change their plugin interfaces or build design exploration themselves, Rivet loses its place.
- **Changing product.** The October 2025 launch sold a point-and-edit visual editor; the November 2026 product explores many directions and, since 29 October 2026, no longer writes the chosen design into the project. Sharing was turned off on 23 October 2026. Users should expect further changes.
- **Competition.** Other stories on this site cover AI designers that generate screens or front-end code, such as Sleek, AIDesigner and Screenshot to Code; Rivet differs by running inside the user's coding agent and real codebase.

## Sources

1. Rivet home page, rivet.design, read 6 November 2026 — https://rivet.design/ (grade C). Read in full, with the terms of service and privacy notice that are part of the site's script bundle. Source for the install targets, the terms on subscription fees and PostHog.
2. Y Combinator company page: Rivet — https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/rivet-design (grade C). Read in full. Source for the founder, founding year, batch, location and status.
3. Y Combinator launch post, 29 October 2025: Rivet - Burn down your design backlog — https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Oi3-rivet-burn-down-your-design-backlog (grade C). Read in full. Founder's launch post. Source for the first product, the founder's background and the launch offer.
4. Rivet documentation: What's New (release notes) — https://docs.rivet.design/releases (grade C). Read in full as markdown. Source for the release dates, models, credits and product changes.
5. Rivet story page, rivet.design/story, read 6 November 2026 — https://rivet.design/story (grade C). Read the text of the page in the site's script bundle. Source for the company's reason for the product and the hiring statement.
6. Rivet documentation: Welcome and Install & set up — https://docs.rivet.design/quickstart (grade C). Read in full as markdown. Source for the supported agents and the install method.
7. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Rivet? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Rivet).