Atlas

An extensible open source software catalog

Atlas puts ownership, dependencies, APIs, diagrams, database schemas, and business flows in one searchable catalog. Repository manifests keep catalog data close to the code it describes.

Documentation · Getting started · Plugin development

What is Atlas?

Atlas is a self-hosted catalog for recording software and the relationships around it. It tracks systems, components, resources, APIs, teams, owners, and lifecycle state. Plugins add architecture views and other technical details.

Each Atlas installation combines Core with a selected set of plugins. The selection is explicit and versioned, so the same distribution can be built again.

Features

• Browse systems, components, resources, APIs, teams, ownership, lifecycle, and relationships in one catalog.
• Explore a system landscape and entity-level C4 diagrams.
• Document API specifications, endpoints, operations, SQL schemas, and entity relationship diagrams.
• Describe cross-system processes with catalog entities, API operations, external participants, and free-form steps.
• Discover repositories and reconcile catalog-info.yaml manifests through the built-in Git ingestion pipeline.
• Add entity kinds, pages, routes, scheduled work, permissions, authentication providers, and integrations through typed plugin contracts.
• Use local credentials, OpenID Connect, or the built-in Gitea OAuth2 adapter in the documented deployment topologies, or implement a custom auth provider plugin against the authentication provider SDK for another identity source, including a self-hosted OAuth2 provider.

Get started

Atlas requires Docker Desktop with Compose v2. Clone the repository and create the local environment file:

cp core/backend/.env.example core/backend/.env

Start the development stack:

docker compose --env-file core/backend/.env -f docker-compose.dev.yml up --build

Keep it running. Database migrations run automatically before the backend starts. Once the stack is up, open http://localhost:5173

To explore a populated catalog, load the booking demo:

docker compose --env-file core/backend/.env -f docker-compose.dev.yml exec backend python manage.py seed_booking_demo --yes

Live demo

A public demo with the booking catalog is available at https://atlas-demo-j12z.onrender.com (free tier: the first open after idle takes a while, and the data resets nightly).

Sign in as the unprivileged guest user:

• Username: guest
• Password: atlas-demo-guest-password

guest reads the whole catalog and can create and edit entities owned by its own guest-team Group, but cannot change anyone else's.

For a walkthrough of the seeded catalog, including relationships, search, detail, and diagram views, follow the Getting Started guide.

Built-in plugins

The default distribution includes these plugins:

Plugin	What it adds
Standard Catalog	Systems, Components, Resources, Teams, ownership, relations, and lifecycle
APIs	API specifications, endpoints, operations, and dependency links
C4	Catalog-wide and entity-scoped architecture diagrams
Database Schema	SQL schema data and ER diagrams attached to Resources
Ingestion	Git repository discovery, manifest parsing, claims, and reconciliation
Flows	Cross-system process documentation linked to catalog entities and API operations

Atlas selects plugins from a versioned distribution manifest and composes locked backend and frontend artifacts before startup. The running application does not download plugins. See Features and Integrations and Distributions for details.

Documentation

• Use Atlas covers browsing, creating, inspecting, and managing catalog entities.
• Operate Atlas covers authentication, plugins, migrations, upgrades, and data safety.
• Concepts and architecture explains the entity, identity, lifecycle, permissions, and composition models.
• Build a plugin describes the public backend and frontend contracts used to extend Atlas.
• Reference lists manifests, configuration, registries, management commands, and authentication contracts.
• Catalog authoring skills (source in skills/) let an AI assistant fill the catalog from a codebase and build flows through the MCP server.

Runnable examples are available for authentication, repository ingestion and search with Meilisearch. For host-only development, see the backend and frontend guides.

Contributing

The contributor guide describes the repository layout, development workflows, architectural constraints, and validation requirements.

License

Atlas is available under the MIT License.