The rules of the world
An answer is terrain, not a verdict.
Atlas turns a collaborator’s public answer into thought-objects you can inhabit. You are not reading hidden chain-of-thought or a neural trace. You are walking the answer’s inspectable story: what it claims, what supports it, where judgment entered, and which roads were rejected.
You are the inhabitant
The model can extend a path. You choose where to stand, what to challenge, and what deserves permanence.
Origins remain visible
Every question, answer, fork, veto, provider, and model keeps its identity. Connections do not erase provenance.
Negative space stays
Uncertainty and rejected alternatives remain walkable evidence of how an answer took shape.
Install & connect
Prepare the doorway.
Atlas is one local application. AI collaborators remain separate provider tools, with their own accounts, authentication, subscriptions, model choices, and usage limits.
Windows
Install for your user
- Download and run the per-user installer.
- If SmartScreen appears, review the unsigned-publisher warning and choose to continue only if you trust this release.
- Finish setup. Atlas starts and opens
127.0.0.1:7462in your browser.
Linux
Install from one command
- Open a terminal.
- Run the reviewed installer command below.
- Open the local URL it prints. A user service keeps Atlas ready when available.
Choose a collaborator
Open Set up collaborators. Atlas reports missing, sign-in required, ready, or failed—not a vague “connected.”
Install or sign in. On Windows, Atlas can open the official provider command. Complete every credential step in that provider’s terminal or browser.
Choose Check again. A bounded handshake confirms the CLI can answer and reads its current public model/version.
Choose collaborators and a guide. Connect up to five collaborators and one independent guide. The active collaborator answers future continuations; the guide powers Spark. One agent can serve both roles. Stored attribution stays intact.
Bring your own Agent
Work with the agents you already know.
Atlas supports Codex, Claude Code, Grok Build, OpenCode, Prime Agent, Hermes and OpenClaw connections. Start in Workspace → Set up collaborators to discover local installations, rescan, and connect the agent you choose after its readiness check.
Your independent guide
Click the floating Agent Spark to discuss the thought where you are standing. Choose one guide separately from your collaborators; it can be the same agent or a different one. Its private question-and-reply conversation stays separate from graph continuations, Field Notes and evidence. Local Claude, Codex, Grok, OpenCode and Prime Agent support guide discussion; Hermes and OpenClaw can use their explicit SSH route.
Let your agent visit the Atlas
The local Agent Bridge offers read-only status, search, chamber reads and cited context by default. Explicit scopes let a named agent start a private Threadwalk, append an attributed path or leave a question at an exact thought. Identical contribution retries reuse the original receipt. Generate a client configuration with mcp config --client CLIENT and verify it with mcp check. Windows uses the installed AtlasOfThreadsMCP.exe; Linux uses the Atlas executable. Choose the same Personal Atlas store as the app.
Connect an existing remote agent
Choose Add Remote Agent, enter your SSH destination, verify its fingerprint, and select an existing Hermes or OpenClaw agent after discovery and a health check. Credentials and native memory stay on the host. The helper needs Linux, macOS or WSL; there is no automatic LAN scan. Setup explains connection failures and scoped firewall commands with undo instructions. Atlas does not apply firewall rules for you.
Follow the Windows/Linux agent setup for exact commands and client configuration, the remote-agent guide for SSH, and the compatibility record for tested client and platform limits.
Open the inquiry
Place one real question at the origin.
In onboarding, write the question you actually want to live with—not a placeholder. Choose Start a Threadwalk. Atlas preserves your exact words as the human origin, sends one continuation to the active collaborator, and opens the first chamber while the response forms.
On later visits, Atlas asks where you want to stand: Resume Last Chamber returns to the exact browser-local position you left; Open Session Head enters the newest generation in that inquiry; Home opens Workspace over the current head.
Music & sound
Choose the soundtrack to your Threadwalk.
Press L during onboarding, on the resume screen, or inside Atlas. Music and sound effects have separate pause buttons and volume sliders. The resume screen keeps its three navigation tiles, with a smaller “Press L for Music and Sound” note below them.
The Unwritten Atlas
The main title and 12 companion tracks play through and loop, alongside cinematic effects. Skip backward or forward, or select a track directly. The title requests playback at each fresh launch; if your browser blocks autoplay, click or press a key to start it.
Bring your own music
Load songs, a folder, or an M3U/M3U8/PLS playlist. Supply the local songs alongside the playlist or in its folder so Atlas can resolve its references. Browser-playable HTTP(S) streams also work. Missing entries are reported. Local files stay in this browser tab and are never uploaded; reload restores the Atlas album.
A new or explicitly resumed Threadwalk starts from a random track, avoiding an immediate repeat when there is more than one song. Your own queue follows the same rule. Moving between chambers keeps the current music playing. Random selection respects an in-session pause. Music volume persists; a music pause lasts for this tab, and a fresh launch requests playback again. S controls effects only.
Read the room
Each chamber is one thought-object.
The central plate names the thought and its kind. Doors and threads show how it relates to neighboring thoughts. The room is spatial on purpose: structure becomes something you can revisit, rather than prose you must remember.
Something the answer asks you to accept.
A reason or assumption supporting a claim.
A comparison carrying meaning between domains.
A choice made where facts alone did not decide.
A limit, unknown, or unresolved question.
A road considered and declined, preserved as negative space.
Read the rings and beams
Blue ringNew AI path
Red ringConversation origin
Bronze ringGraph continuation or fork
Violet ringBack to a cut
Green beamRequest in flight
Blue beamCompleted path awaiting entry
Amber monumentHuman Field Note
Orange launcherFrozen Capsule ready to launch
Ghosted relicRejected road
Continue a path
An ending is an invitation, not a wall.
At a terminal chamber, choose the continuation that matches your intent. Every request is tied to the exact session, graph, standing thought, prompt, collaborator, and resulting graph.
Ready for continuationAsk the active collaborator to carry the thought forward with no extra prompt. Press Q again before completion to cancel.
Ask from here…Add one exact question or invitation, then press Enter. Escape cancels the composer.
Parallel continuationSend the same exact prompt from the same chamber to two or more collaborators.
Return to originRe-enter the graph at its first thought and choose another route.
Shape the terrain
Make disagreement explicit.
Open L at a chamber to find the contextual editing actions. These are append-only graph operations. The source graph remains intact, so the archaeology records both the road and your intervention.
Cut
Remove the selected thought and the bounded dependents it shaped from a new child graph. The original survives. A bronze fork doorway enters the changed context.
Human no
Preserve the challenged thought and add your human-authored veto beside it. The result is a new child graph with the disagreement visible.
Neither action edits a provider’s weights, trains a model, sends preference feedback, or proves anything about internal mechanisms. A later continuation can respond differently because you changed the public graph context—that is the experiment.
Ask together, inspect separately
Open parallel paths without manufacturing consensus.
At a terminal chamber, press P. In Workspace, select at least two ready collaborators and write one shared prompt. Atlas visits them in order; each uses that provider’s own quota.
same promptClaude
path ACodex
path BGrok
path C
Open T after completion. Thread Compass groups matching requests and aligns exact provider/model attribution, entry thought, judgments, uncertainties, rejected-road counts, and structural warnings. It never ranks a winner, averages confidence, or infers agreement. Enter any path and inspect it on its own terms.
Decide what mattered
Write a Field Note in your own words.
After at least one collaborator path completes, an eligible terminal chamber offers W. A parallel comparison can offer the richer multi-path version, but a second subscription is never required.
- 1Select exact thoughts
Choose 1–12 thought-objects from the completed path, or across the exact parallel comparison.
- 2Name the kind
Write a conclusion, unresolved question, or observation. Atlas does not write it for you.
- 3Commit the note
A permanent amber monument appears at every referenced chamber.
- 4Revise without erasing
Editing appends a new revision to the same note. Earlier wording and source selections remain inspectable.
Carry it forward
Keep a local Knowledge Capsule.
Once a completed path has a valid Field Note and all requests in its Threadwalk are settled, Atlas may offer a Capsule: a private, human-readable Markdown dossier of that milestone.
Freeze the complete owning-session record through its observed head at this chamber.
Carry one unspent launcher to another chamber in the same Threadwalk, then press K to deploy there.
Verify source integrity and write the deterministic private Markdown locally.
A Capsule includes the frozen session and head, chronological turns, graph generations, continuations and failures, cuts and vetoes, the exact Field Note revision, evidence/provenance summaries, and an ID/SHA-256 integrity appendix. It excludes credentials, hidden reasoning, browser atmosphere, mutable canvas state, and unrelated sessions. It is not a truth certificate, backup, publication, or network message. To send selected thoughts to another inhabitant, use shared excerpt Capsules.
Story above, machinery below
Keep the two whys separate.
Press E to descend from a thought into available evidence. Press Shift + R to browse the relic index. Atlas names what a record can support instead of letting narrative explanation masquerade as causal proof.
Why does the answer say this?
The visible graph: claims, premises, judgments, uncertainties, analogies, rejected roads, and their relations.
What causal evidence supports it?
Explicit probes, context edits, interventions, attribution, or other measured evidence—each bounded by what that method can actually establish.
Chronological context is provenance, not causality. A thought surviving an edit supports robustness under that edit, not universal truth. A thought disappearing contradicts it under that tested condition. Missing evidence remains missing; Atlas does not fill the gap with confidence theater.
Orient across scales
Three instruments, three different jobs.
The chamber keeps local structure in front of you. The other instruments help you move across generations and inquiries without turning the Atlas into a dashboard.
Thread Compass
Reads the durable lineage of the current Threadwalk: human origins, AI continuations, cuts, vetoes, Field Notes, Capsules, and parallel groups. Enter any generation through its canonical chamber.
Atlas Map
Opens exact thoughts in a stable top-down projection. Switch to All answers, select an answer, then choose Thoughts in this answer to inspect its internal paths. Current and previously visited locations are marked. Click to enter, drag to pan, and use the wheel to zoom.
Workspace
Choose collaborators and an independent Spark guide, refresh readiness, reopen local or remote setup, request parallel paths, start a clean Threadwalk, enter historical sessions, check for tagged releases, update Atlas, or quit the local application.
Refresh is not activate. Refresh asks a provider which model/version it currently exposes. Activate changes the default for future requests. Neither rewrites attribution already stored in the Atlas.
The complete key map
Every move, in one place.
Press L inside Atlas to keep this legend beside the live chamber. Clickable controls mirror the main keyboard actions where they appear.
Online now
Enter The Connected Atlas.
Visit a shared world of published inquiries in your desktop browser. Reading and walking do not require an installed Atlas, a GitHub account or an AI subscription.
Choose an inquiry. Select a location in the overworld or open Inquiries to browse the published collection. Drag to pan, use the wheel to zoom, and choose Return to center if you lose your bearings.
Read or walk. Choose Read here for the text or Enter Threadwalk to explore its thought-objects. Use Return to the Atlas to leave the walk and return to the overworld.
Keep a trail. After choosing Connect with GitHub, star an inquiry to find it again or enable Follow updates. The Inquiries collection can show Starred or Following; Published editions lets you inspect earlier snapshots.
Bring it home. Choose Bring into Personal Atlas to download a copy. In your local app, open Portable inquiries, select the file, review it and choose Import and visit.
Open Sound & music in the overworld to adjust effects and music separately. Preview Capsule launch plays the charge, blast and flight without sending anything. Interact with the page to enable browser audio. Music follows the active tab and continues into a published Threadwalk and back.
Connect & publish
Choose what becomes part of the world.
A connection identifies your device. Publication shares a reviewed snapshot of one inquiry. These are separate choices.
Pair your Personal Atlas
- 1Sign in online
Open The Connected Atlas and choose Connect with GitHub. Open your account name, name this computer and choose Create pairing code.
- 2Connect this computer
In Personal Atlas, open Connect to the Atlas from the Atlas menu or Workspace. Paste the single-use code within ten minutes, then choose Connect this Personal Atlas.
- 3Check the connection
The control shows that you are connected after verification. Each computer needs its own pairing. No inquiries are uploaded by pairing.
Publish an inquiry
Prepare the snapshot locally. Open Portable inquiries, choose a Threadwalk, enter a sharing name and description, then choose Review export. Review all included answers, questions and links for private information.
Save the publication file. Choose Save online publication file. Saving prepares the file; it does not publish it.
Review online and publish. In The Connected Atlas, choose Publish an inquiry, select that file and inspect the public contents. Confirm publication only when the audience and text are right.
Return a contribution
Bring a perspective back to its source.
A response begins in your private Atlas and stays tied to the thought or Capsule that invited it. You decide whether to offer it back.
Continue privately. While visiting an imported inquiry, select a thought and choose Continue privately. Review your question, exact source and selected collaborator before confirming. This creates your own Threadwalk and leaves the imported source unchanged.
Offer an excerpt or a full path. From work on a received Capsule, prepare Return a contribution and review its excerpts and recipient before sending. For a complete inquiry response, open Returned paths → Review offer back; review the full contents before saving an offline return file or choosing Review online doorway.
Separate private acceptance from a public doorway. A returned excerpt can be accepted privately. An online doorway requires publishing the full returned inquiry and separately sending the proposed connection. That inquiry is public as soon as you publish it, even before the source owner accepts the doorway.
Let the source owner decide. The owner reviews Doorways → My proposals and decisions online, or Check online returned doorways in Personal Atlas. After inspecting both ends, they explicitly accept the public connection or decline it.
Accepted doorways let you walk between the published inquiries. In a local returned path, expand the glowing Atlas menu and use Return to Source: publisher name to revisit the exact thought; Return to my Atlas leaves the imported visit. For a private full-path exchange, use the reviewed return file instead of publishing an online doorway.
Privacy & your account
Stay in control of what you share.
Public inquiries, directed Capsules and private local work have different audiences. Review each action at the point where it leaves your computer.
Disconnect a computer
Open your online account to revoke a paired device, or use Disconnect this Personal Atlas locally. Revoking access does not delete local inquiries. A forgotten local credential alone does not revoke access at the service.
Choose whether to appear active
Activity sharing starts off. If enabled, it shows coarse, temporary activity and expires when inactive. It does not reveal your private chamber, conversation or local work.
Withdraw, report or block
Review your publication’s withdrawal control when you no longer want it available. Use Report this inquiry for a concern, and account blocking to restrict exchanges. Withdrawal cannot remove copies someone already downloaded.
If a path goes dark
Read the state before retrying.
Most interruptions happen at the provider boundary or because the local app is still running outside the browser. Atlas preserves the request and failure state so retrying does not erase what happened.
A collaborator shows installed but will not answer
Open Workspace → Set up collaborators. Complete the provider’s own sign-in flow, then choose Check again. “Ready” requires the CLI handshake—not merely an installed desktop app or executable.
I changed the provider’s model
Choose Refresh beside that collaborator in Workspace. Atlas reads the current model/version for display. Activate it separately if it is not already the default.
I closed the browser but Atlas is still running
That is expected. The tab is the view; the local app and collaborator worker remain ready. On Windows, three idle Atlas processes are normal. Use Workspace → Quit Atlas to stop them cleanly.
An update is available
Atlas checks the public release manifest at startup. Choose Update Atlas in the prompt or Workspace. It downloads the exact tagged package, verifies its SHA-256, and then installs or replaces it. Ordinary commits never become client updates. Version 0.3.1 fixes certificate-bundle lookup for Linux update checks. If an older installation cannot detect this update, rerun the Linux installer command above; your Personal Atlas is preserved.
A continuation failed
Open the failed arrival. Read the provider error, then retry the continuation or choose another ready collaborator. Invalid graph formatting gets one automatic repair attempt with the same collaborator. Transport failures are not retried by that repair, and completed sibling paths stay intact. If repair fails, the failed attempt remains part of the record.
The music did not start
Some browsers require an interaction before audible autoplay. Click or press a key, or open L and choose Play music. Check the separate music volume. A pause applies to the current tab; a fresh launch requests the title again.
My guide is not the collaborator I expected
Guide and collaborator are independent roles. Open Workspace and select the guide for Spark separately from the collaborator that generates future paths. MCP configuration alone does not create an outbound return route.
My Personal Atlas is no longer connected
Check your internet connection and choose Check connection. If the device or GitHub authorization was revoked, sign in online again and create a new pairing code. Your local inquiries remain intact.
I cannot find an older inquiry
Open M and look under Historical. Choose the session head there, then use T to move among its generations.