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title: "Network" description: "Start an HTTP server inside the VM and call it with vm.httpRequest()." category: "Quickstart" order: 6

Network

Run a real HTTP server inside the VM and call it from your host code. Reach for this when guest code needs to expose a port or you want to drive an in-VM service over HTTP.

How it works

Create a VM with network and childProcess permissions, then writeFile a small Node server script into the VM. vm.spawn launches it, and the server prints its bound port on stdout, which an onProcessOutput subscription parses out. With the port in hand, vm.httpRequest({ port, path }) routes a buffered request to that in-VM server over localhost and returns the serializable HttpResponse DTO. Cleanup waits briefly on the process and disposes the VM.

Preview URLs (agent.createPreviewUrl) live only in the RivetKit actor wrapper, not the core API — see examples/networking/.

Run it

npm install
npx tsx index.ts
# Logs the server's port, then "Response: { status: 'ok', method: 'GET', url: '/api/test' }"

Source

View the source on GitHub: https://github.com/rivet-dev/agent-os/tree/main/examples/quickstart/network