Rivet is an open-source, installable robotics runtime and capability-development platform designed to provide a consistent safety and control boundary between robotic applications and underlying hardware. Built primarily in Python for Raspberry Pi and adaptable robotics systems, Rivet separates hardware discovery, command authority, safety policy, resource management, perception provenance, and higher-level robot capabilities into explicit runtime layers. The platform includes deterministic hardware simulation; GPIO, I²C, SPI, UART, motor, camera, and sensor abstractions; capability discovery; authority grants and actuator leases; heartbeat and emergency-stop safeguards; fault injection; resource-aware adaptation; mission admission; role and competency modeling; SkillGraph-based qualification evidence; behavior-transfer primitives; and auditable event records. Rivet is designed around a core principle: discovering that a robot can perform an action should never automatically mean that software is authorized to perform it. Higher-level AI, autonomous applications, ROS integrations, and web interfaces remain behind Rivet’s explicit runtime authority and safety boundaries. The project can run without physical Raspberry Pi hardware through a dependency-free deterministic simulator, enabling development, verification, fault testing, and CI before connecting physical adapters. Current Release: Rivet 1.2.0 Beta Technologies: Python, Robotics, Raspberry Pi, Hardware Abstraction, Embedded Systems, Robot Simulation, Safety Systems, Autonomous Systems, CI/CD, Open Source