Raptor Studio

RAPTOR Studio

An open-source reliability block diagram (RBD) simulator for Windows, macOS and Linux. Draw a diagram of parts that can fail and be repaired, run thousands of simulated futures, and read availability, reliability, maintenance, spares and cost numbers like an engineer, then find out which part to spend money on.

RAPTOR Studio carries on from Raptor 7, the simulator written at ARINC and released as open source by Booz Allen Hamilton. Its simulation engine was ported from Raptor 7's own source and checked, event by event, against what Raptor 7 itself writes, so the numbers are the ones reliability engineers already trust. Models made in Raptor 7 open here. Around that engine is a new application, a command line, and an AI-assistant server.

Like Raptor 7, it is released under the Booz Allen Public License (BAPL). Anyone may use, modify and share it, but a commercial entity may use it only for its internal business and for services to government and non-profit organisations, and nobody may charge a fee for it without Booz Allen Hamilton's permission. See Licence & credits.

Why use it

• Numbers you can rely on. The detailed event logs and report files of hundreds of models captured from Raptor 7 are reproduced character for character, including its random-number generator. Where Raptor 7 does something surprising, the port reproduces it and says so.
• It tells you what to fix, not just how you are doing. Weak-link analysis, single-point-failure lists and importance measures (Birnbaum, RAW, RRW and Vesely–Fussell, see below) rank the parts of your system by how much they matter, and colour the diagram to match.
• Built for speed. Runs split across your processor cores, and the engine, layout, validation and file loading have been tuned so that models with hundreds or thousands of blocks are practical to build, open and run. We expect it to be faster than Raptor 7 on most models, particularly large ones and batches on several cores. raptor estimate times a few runs and tells you how long a full batch will take before you start it.
• Runs anywhere. One installer or pip install, on Windows, macOS and Linux.
• Scriptable. Everything the application does is also a command (raptor run, sweep, compare, diff, estimate, validate, spf, fev, step, extract, analytic, render and more) with machine-readable results. It fits in a continuous-integration job, a Jupyter notebook or a shell loop.
• Usable from an AI assistant. An MCP server with 68 tools (67 when --no-render hides the PNG diagram tool) lets an assistant build, edit, validate, simulate, compare and explain models, run long batches in the background, and draw the diagram. The MCP server guide covers install, client setup, concepts and task recipes; the generated tool reference lists every tool, parameter and return. The recording below is a real run of those tools (the numbers are the engine's; the assistant's narration is scripted):

• A model file you can read and diff. .rbds is one JSON document with friendly field names, and raptor diff (or File ▸ Differences) says in words what changed between two versions of a model. .rbd files open and save exactly as before.
• Documentation that ships with it. _Break It Before It Breaks_, a 24-chapter tutorial book with a model for each chapter that opens from the page, a field-by-field reference manual, and a formulas page. F1 opens the right section.

Which part matters most? Importance measures

Availability says how good the system is. Importance says which block to improve. Switch on Run ▸ Analysis ▸ Importance measures (or raptor run --importance both, or importance on the MCP simulate tool) and RAPTOR Studio re-simulates the model with each block in turn made unable to fail, and with it dead, then ranks every block by how much the system moves. You get:

• Birnbaum, RAW (risk achievement worth), RRW (risk reduction worth) and Vesely–Fussell importance, the IEC 61078 Annex D measures, each with its sampling error so you can tell a real ranking from noise;
• an Importance tab in the results, and a Show on Canvas colouring that paints the most influential blocks red and badges each block with its rank;
• an up-front time estimate that includes the extra batches, so a long analysis never surprises you.

The equations are on the Formulas page, and the tutorial's weak-link chapter works through an example.

What is new compared with Raptor 7

Install

Windows / macOS / Linux (recommended for non-technical users)

Grab the installer for your platform from the Releases page:

Verify the checksums against SHA256SUMS.txt in the same release. The installers carry the desktop application only; the raptor command line and the MCP server come with the pip package (below).

File types: the Windows installer, macOS app and .deb register .rbds and .rbd so a double-click opens the model in RAPTOR Studio. On a machine with Raptor 7, .rbd keeps opening Raptor 7 by default and RAPTOR Studio is added under "Open with". The AppImage cannot register file types system-wide; run raptor-studio model.rbds or use File → Open.

macOS note (unsigned build): Gatekeeper will ask for confirmation. Right-click RAPTOR Studio → Open → Open, or run xattr -cr "/Applications/RAPTOR Studio.app" once in Terminal.

Windows note (unsigned build): SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC" — click More info → Run anyway.

PyPI (technical users, and for the MCP server)

pip install raptor-studio              # the application and command line

pip install "raptor-studio[mcp]" # plus the MCP server for AI assistants

or, isolated from your system Python:

pipx install "raptor-studio[mcp]"

For the assistant server alone, uvx raptor-studio-mcp --workspace ~/raptor-models runs it without an install step.

Then run raptor-studio for the application, raptor --help for the command line, or raptor-studio-mcp for the assistant server. pip puts these three commands in the environment's bin folder (Scripts on Windows), so in