# Atlas

> A macOS desktop app that acts as source control for coding agents, linking every commit back to the agent session, prompts, and tool calls that produced it.

Atlas is an open-source macOS desktop application built by Adib Mohsin (GitHub: pacifio) that describes itself as "source control for coding agents." Currently in alpha (v0.3.1), it lets developers run multiple coding agents — Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and any ACP-compatible agent — side by side against the same codebase, while capturing every session, prompt, tool call, and commit checkpoint in a local SQLite database.

## What It Is

Atlas sits at the intersection of a multi-agent runner, a session recorder, and a developer workspace. The core idea is that the reasoning behind a code change — the prompt, the tool calls, the approach tried and abandoned — normally disappears the moment a terminal scrolls. Atlas keeps it. Every agent run produces checkpoints: commits are linked back to the session that made them, with prompts, tool calls, and file changes kept together and queryable months later. The project is MIT-licensed and built primarily in Rust using the Tauri framework, with a React view layer.

## How Session Capture Works

Atlas records every agent session locally in `.atlas/sessions.db` next to the repository. Secrets and tokens are scrubbed before anything is written to disk. When a commit is made — from any tool, even with Atlas closed — it is linked back to the session that produced it as a checkpoint. These links survive rebases and amends via patch-id reconciliation. Users can select any checkpoint and chat with it directly to recover context from what actually happened in that session. The capture system works fully offline with no account required.

## Multi-Agent and Shared Memory Architecture

Claude Code and Codex run as external subprocesses over ACP (Agent Client Protocol). Atlas's own native agent runs in-process on a hard fork of the Codex engine. Any agent in the ACP registry — including Cursor, OpenCode, and Kilo Code — can be spawned automatically. Before a message reaches any agent, Atlas assembles context around it:

- **`@` mentions** resolve locally in Rust before the prompt is sent — files, folders, symbols, branches, commits, notes, and past sessions
- **Shared agent memory** — an on-device semantic index using local embeddings and HNSW search that every agent reads from and writes to
- **Session handoff** — a curated fact pack plus the tail of the last session, including sessions from a different agent
- **Existing knowledge files** — `CLAUDE.md`, `AGENTS.md`, Claude Code's memory files, and Codex's history, folded into one index

This means a decision Claude Code made is visible to Codex's next prompt, and vice versa, without either agent being able to read the other's history natively.

## The Workspace

Atlas is a full developer workspace, not just an agent runner. It includes:

- **Editor** — CodeMirror 6 with support for JS, TS, Python, Rust, Go, Java, C++, JSON, YAML, Markdown, SQL, CSS, HTML, and XML; files are real files on disk
- **Git graph** — a custom lane-assignment commit graph with stage/unstage/commit, branch operations, and inline diffs
- **Terminal** — split panes, tabs, and search across history; agents share the same shell
- **Built-in browser** — native WebKit webview with real logins, cookies, and reader mode
- **Knowledge base** — plain markdown notes in `.atlas/knowledge/`, versioned with the repo, with backlinks and a link graph
- **Spaces/Canvas** — an infinite spatial board for notes, persisted as JSON in the project
- **Activity log** — a 500-event ring buffer in memory plus an append-only JSONL log on disk
- **Memory inspector** — a browsable view of what agents remember, with on-device MiniLM embeddings for semantic graph visualization

## Update: Alpha 0.3.1 — "Atlas comms alpha"

The latest release, alpha-0.3.1 (published September 6, 2026), adds team communication features: organisations with roles, team chat with channels and direct messages, voice/video calls with transcripts, live co-edited prompt drafts, and a shared canvas. The homepage notes that organisations, accounts, team chat, and the session timeline are now live. Items still on the roadmap include shared knowledge bases across teams, thread sync, version control for agent knowledge, cloud integrations (Jira, Confluence), and team-level agent reference systems. The project is built primarily in Rust and is available as a native binary for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, with Linux and Windows buildable from source but untested.

## Local-First and Open-Source Model

Atlas is MIT-licensed and free during the alpha. It follows a local-first philosophy: code, notes, and sessions stay on the user's machine by default. An Atlas account is optional and only required to sync across devices or teammates within an organisation. Anonymous usage analytics are on by default but can be disabled. The project had approximately 3,300 GitHub stars and 213 forks as of the data collected, and appears on Trendshift's trending Rust repositories list.

## Features
- Multi-agent runner: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and ACP agents side by side
- Session capture: every prompt, tool call, and file change recorded locally in SQLite
- Checkpoints: commits linked back to the agent session that produced them
- Shared agent memory with on-device embeddings (MiniLM, HNSW search)
- @ mention system for files, folders, symbols, branches, commits, notes, and past sessions
- CodeMirror 6 editor with multi-language support
- Custom lane-assignment git graph with inline diffs and full git client
- Block terminal with split panes, tabs, and history search
- Built-in WebKit browser with real logins and reader mode
- Knowledge base as plain markdown in .atlas/knowledge/
- Infinite spatial canvas (Spaces) persisted as JSON
- Activity log: 500-event ring buffer plus append-only JSONL on disk
- Memory inspector with semantic graph and timeline scrubber
- Team organisations with roles, channels, DMs, and voice/video calls
- Blast radius analysis before agent commits
- Token transparency: per-thread token and cost counters
- Secrets scrubbed before anything is written to disk
- Local-first: no account required, no data uploaded by default
- Transcript import to backfill existing Claude Code history
- Skills system: SKILL.md files scoped globally or per project

## Integrations
Claude Code, Codex (OpenAI), OpenCode, Cursor, Kilo Code, ACP (Agent Client Protocol), Redis (idempotency example), arXiv, Semantic Scholar, Jira (roadmap), Confluence (roadmap), GitHub

## Platforms
WINDOWS, MACOS, LINUX, WEB, API, CLI

## Pricing
Open Source

## Version
alpha-0.3.1

## Links
- Website: https://www.tryatlas.cc/
- Documentation: https://docs.tryatlas.cc/
- Repository: https://github.com/pacifio/atlas
- EveryDev.ai: https://www.everydev.ai/tools/atlas-source-control-for-agents