RIVET / WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT COSTS
The archive assistant that shows its citations.
Rivet answers build, setup, rules, records, and history questions from the published Soapbox Speed Lab archive, keeps the sources beside the answer, and never reads private Race Shop data.
WHAT RIVET IS
A source-grounded Derby archive assistant.
Rivet is the fictional red-helmet pit coach who searches this site's Derby archive: setup guides, division pages, the rules desk, race records, race cities, racer profiles, and the Derby Tech research shelf. It retrieves the material first and answers second, and it keeps every page and official document it checked attached to the answer.
The point is not that a model wrote something confident. The point is that you can open what it read. Rivet also states which mode produced the answer, so an archive-search result is never dressed up as a synthesized one.
GROUNDED
Retrieval comes first
Answers are composed from indexed site content and the registered source list. When no AI model is configured, the archive search still returns a useful, honest result.
CITED
The citation is part of the answer
Every response links the internal pages and official documents it actually used. You are meant to open them, not take Rivet's word for it.
PRIVATE
Your Race Shop stays yours
Rivet never reads private Race Shop data. Your account, cars, runs, experiments, and notes are not in the retrieval corpus, so there is nothing there for it to read.
HOW ACCESS WORKS
Try it with no account, then pay only if you keep using it.
Every question costs real model time, so the allowances are set against what an answer actually costs rather than against a guess. Nothing below unlocks a different Rivet: the archive, the citations, and the privacy boundary are identical on every tier.
NO ACCOUNT
3 questions
Free, nothing to sign up for.
Ask three questions from any page on the site and judge the answers before you decide whether Rivet is worth an account.
FREE ACCOUNT
10 questions a day
Free with a Race Shop account.
A free account raises the limit to 10 questions a day, up to 100 in a month. That is the honest ceiling, stated here rather than discovered when it stops answering.
PRO
500 questions a month
9 USD a month.
For teams working the archive through a build season, Pro replaces the daily cap with a 500-question monthly allowance on the same account.
CREDIT PACKS
Buy questions outright instead of a subscription.
Credits suit a heavy stretch that does not justify a recurring plan: a first build, an inspection week, or a winter of setup research. A credit is spent only after the plan allowance for the period is already used up, so buying credits never wastes the questions you have.
STARTER
250 questions
5 USD.
Enough to work a single build or setup problem end to end without watching a daily counter.
SHOP
600 questions
10 USD.
A working season's allowance for one team sharing a Race Shop account.
SEASON
1500 questions
20 USD.
The lowest price per question, for programs running several cars and racers at once.
Checkout and the billing portal are hosted by Stripe. No card details are entered on or stored by this site, and every credit movement is written to an auditable ledger so a balance can always be reconstructed.
WHAT RIVET WILL NOT DO
A helpful answer is not a rules ruling.
This is the part most assistants leave out. Rivet is useful because of what it refuses to do, and the refusals are deliberate.
NO INVENTED NUMBERS
It will not make up a dimension
Rivet does not produce dimensions, torque values, weight limits, clearances, or tolerances that it cannot show you in a source. A number with no citation behind it is a number it should not have written.
NO INVENTED RULES
It will not write a rule
Rivet summarizes and points at the published rule material. It does not paraphrase a limit into existence, and it cannot authorize a body, axle, weight, wheel, fastener, lubricant, or material change.
NO OFFICIAL STANDING
It is not an official
Rivet is a Soapbox Speed Lab feature, not an ISBD or NDR official, inspector, or representative, and nothing it says survives contact with a person who is.
Authority stays where it belongs: the current official rule book, division build plan, season amendments, event instructions, inspectors, and race officials outrank every summary on this site. If Rivet and the rule book disagree, the rule book is right. Reopen the official source on the day of the work.
START A QUESTION
Ask the first three for free.
Open Rivet from here, or go to the archive desk for example questions and a worked answer showing how the sources are presented.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Check the primary material.
- ISBD Rule Book - linked for the 2026 World Championship Official PDF currently linked from Race Week resources; the file itself says revised June 2025.
- ISBD race divisions and build plans Official division descriptions, age bands, weights, plans, and Legacy information.
- Derby Tech bibliographic leads Secondary bibliography for issues still missing. Retained for the runs that have not yet been located.