HashiCorp vs Rivet
Side-by-side trajectory, velocity, and editorial themes.
HashiCorp pushes an infrastructure graph and Boundary 1.0 while reorienting around AI-agent access
HashiCorp is layering two moves on top of its IaC and secrets core: a graph-based source of truth for sprawling multi-cloud estates, and a steady buildout of access control for AI agents. Boundary reached 1.0 with session recording, Vault and Boundary both shipped agent-security previews, and HCP gained SCIM provisioning. The through-line is governing who — and increasingly what — can touch infrastructure.
Terraform is being repositioned from provisioning tool to system-of-record via Infragraph, while Boundary and Vault extend privileged access from humans to autonomous agents. The AI-agent framing recurs across nearly every release, suggesting HashiCorp sees agent access as the next control-plane contest. Expect the graph and the access layer to knit into a single governance story.
Likely next: Infragraph moving from limited to general availability, and more concrete Vault and Boundary primitives for scoping and recording AI-agent sessions.
Rivet pivots from actor backend to a coding-agent OS, and is building the ecosystem to match.
Rivet began as an actor and serverless backend platform — RivetKit, Rivet Actors, Rivet Compute — and has spent the last month reorienting around agentOS, a WebAssembly-based Linux environment for running coding agents without a heavy sandbox. The June and July releases show both threads running in parallel: native language SDKs (Rust, Effect) for Actors, and a fast-maturing agentOS that now has its own package registry.
The center of gravity is shifting from hosting stateful actors to being the runtime coding agents execute inside. agentOS went from a v0.2 sandbox alternative to shipping a package registry and a sub-millisecond package manager in under two weeks, a sign Rivet wants to own the developer surface around agent execution, not just the compute underneath it.
Expect agentOS to keep accreting ecosystem pieces — more registry content and tighter orchestration — while the Actors SDKs settle toward maintenance. A likely next move is deeper coupling between agentOS and Rivet Compute so agents run on Rivet's own cloud.
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