rive_telemetry

rive_telemetry helps you debug Rive animations in Flutter from VS Code.

Use it to inspect and control state machine inputs and ViewModel properties while your app is running. It wraps your existing Rive widget, streams telemetry to the RiveTelemetry VS Code extension, and leaves rendering, layout, and controller ownership with your app.

Features

• Stream state machine input telemetry to VS Code.
• Control boolean, number, and trigger state machine inputs from the panel.
• Identify multiple Rive runtimes with runtimeId and label.
• Stream supported ViewModel properties.
• Mutate supported ViewModel properties at runtime.
• Disable itself automatically in release builds by default.

Production safety

Telemetry is disabled in release builds unless you explicitly opt in:

• enabled: null or omitted: enabled outside release mode only.
• enabled: false: always disabled.
• enabled: true: always enabled.

When disabled, RiveDebugger does not open a WebSocket, start polling timers, serialize telemetry, print telemetry JSON, or send runtime data.

Getting started

Install the Flutter package:

dependencies:
  rive_telemetry: ^0.3.0

Install and run the RiveTelemetry VS Code extension, then open:

RiveTelemetry: Open Panel

By default the package connects to:

ws://localhost:8080

Basic usage

Wrap the rendered Rive widget with RiveDebugger and pass the state machine instance once it is loaded.

RiveDebugger(
  stateMachine: stateMachine,
  stateMachineName: 'State Machine 1',
  child: rive.RiveWidget(controller: controller),
)

For local demos or release-mode validation, explicitly enable telemetry:

RiveDebugger(
  enabled: true,
  source: 'my-flutter-app',
  runtimeId: 'mascot-main',
  label: 'Mascot Main',
  stateMachineName: 'State Machine 1',
  stateMachine: stateMachine,
  child: rive.RiveWidget(controller: controller),
)

Multiple runtimes

Use stable runtime identity fields when an app screen contains more than one Rive runtime:

RiveDebugger(
  runtimeId: 'settings-cat',
  label: 'Settings Cat',
  stateMachineName: 'State Machine 2',
  stateMachine: stateMachine,
  child: rive.RiveWidget(controller: controller),
)

Commands sent from VS Code include runtimeId, so each RiveDebugger instance only applies commands intended for its own runtime.

ViewModel telemetry

If your Rive file uses data binding, pass the loaded ViewModelInstance into RiveDebugger.

rive.RiveWidgetBuilder(
  fileLoader: fileLoader,
  stateMachineSelector: rive.StateMachineSelector.byName('State Machine 2'),
  dataBind: rive.DataBind.byName('catVMInstance'),
  builder: (context, state) => switch (state) {
    rive.RiveLoaded() => RiveDebugger(
      enabled: true,
      source: 'example',
      runtimeId: 'example-cat',
      label: 'Cat Example',
      stateMachineName: 'State Machine 2',
      stateMachine: state.controller.stateMachine,
      viewModelName: 'CatViewModel',
      viewModelInstance: state.viewModelInstance,
      child: rive.RiveWidget(controller: state.controller),
    ),
    rive.RiveLoading() => const CircularProgressIndicator(),
    rive.RiveFailed(:final error) => Text(error.toString()),
  },
)

Supported ViewModel mutation types:

• number
• boolean
• string
• color
• enum
• trigger

Unsupported or unavailable ViewModel APIs fail gracefully and are reported as unavailable in telemetry.

Protocol

rive_telemetry sends JSON telemetry payloads with protocolVersion: 1 to the Rive Telemetry VS Code extension. The extension accepts older payloads without the field, but new runtime bridges should include it.

Example

See example/ for a minimal Flutter app using one demo_2.riv instance, one state machine, and one ViewModel instance.

Limitations

• This package is intended for development tooling, not production analytics.
• The VS Code extension must be running for live panel telemetry.
• ViewModel support is limited to public Rive Flutter runtime APIs.