It involves pulling binaries from anonymous repositories onto your own computer. Therefore, we start by listing what it does not do.
Local source of truth, explicit provider boundary
The vault's canonical files remain on your disk. Atlas has no backend, account, or telemetry, and opening or editing a folder does not upload it to Atlas.
It is plain Markdown
Even if you delete the app, the folder remains. Nothing gets locked. This is not marketing copy; it is a structural fact. Because the storage format is Markdown, there is no way to lock it.
It does not scan automatically
It reads only the folders you choose. Dotfiles like .env and .git/ are excluded from indexing. It does not look at anything else on your disk.
AI connectivity is optional
Atlas-controlled API and runner calls state and record their destination in .ontology-atlas/llm-audit.jsonl. ACP and externally connected MCP agents are a separate boundary: Atlas MCP stays local over stdio, but the selected coding agent may send prompts, context, and tool results to its provider. Atlas does not claim that provider-owned traffic is recorded in its LLM audit log.
Signing and Notarization
The macOS app is signed with Apple Developer ID and notarized. It opens without Gatekeeper warnings.
Open Source
Everything is open. You can verify any of the above statements in the code; claims that cannot be verified are not listed here.