Atlas — a Local-First Desktop Research Operating System

Atlas is the personal strategic OS that runs Acredemia. It's software you own and open every morning — like VS Code, Obsidian, or Linear — to turn intuition into structured, evidence-backed decisions and to keep your organizational intelligence compounding. It runs as a single desktop window over a local engine (boots itself, checks its own health, shuts down cleanly) — no server to manage, no browser tab.

Single-user. Local-first. Offline-first. Yours. No cloud, no accounts, no SaaS.

Knowledge → Understanding → Tested Theories → High-quality Decisions — and remembered forever.

What it is

• A markdown vault (vault/) that is the permanent, human-readable source of truth.
• A set of deterministic engines (app/) over it: parser, search, decision engine, epistemics (confidence/contradiction), synthesis, graph analytics, market intel, and a governance bot that keeps the knowledge base healthy.
• A local dashboard (ui/) — your morning command center.

Every claim traces to evidence. Confidence is derived, never asserted. AI is optional (local Ollama only) and can never override a deterministic result.

Run it (clone → install → one command)

git clone https://github.com/krishagarwal175/Project-Atlas.git
cd Project-Atlas
pip install -r app/requirements.txt

python desktop/atlas.py    # windowed desktop app (boots the kernel, opens a window)
# —or, engine only—
cd app && python cli.py serve    # local API on http://127.0.0.1:8000; open ui/index.html

Build a distributable .exe: python desktop/build.py → dist/Atlas.exe (see desktop/README.md). No cloud setup. No accounts. No deployment. It works offline; the internet only enhances Market Intelligence.

Also useful:

python cli.py stats        # vault health snapshot
python cli.py audit        # run the governance bot
python cli.py search "should we launch a referral program"
python -m pytest           # 37 tests over the deterministic core

Repository

app/        # the application (engines, parser, governance, decision engine, api, cli, tests)
ui/         # local dashboard (single self-contained HTML, no build step)
vault/      # the knowledge substrate — open it in Obsidian; it works by hand alone
docs/       # local-first development + architecture pointers
archive/    # marketing/landing-page — a FUTURE public release, not part of Atlas v1

Foundations

• Design system: docs/DESIGN-SYSTEM.md · Desktop architecture: docs/DESKTOP-ARCHITECTURE.md
• ADRs: 001 substrate · 002 freeze · 003 local-first · 004 desktop
• Dev guide: docs/DEVELOPMENT.md

Cloud/multi-user is a possible Phase 5 — v1 ignores it entirely and is excellent locally first.