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Atomic

Getting Started

Atomic turns freeform markdown notes (“atoms”) into a semantically connected, AI-augmented knowledge graph.

What Is Atomic?

Section titled “What Is Atomic?”

Atomic has three common ways to run:

  • Atomic Cloud - the hosted service at a subdomain you choose, with AI included and nothing to configure. The fastest way to start.
  • Desktop app - a local-first Tauri app that starts its own atomic-server sidecar on your machine.
  • Self-hosted server - a headless atomic-server plus optional web frontend for remote access, mobile use, browser clipping, and MCP over HTTP.

All three use the same core engine and HTTP API, and your data can migrate between them. Cloud is the quickest start; the desktop app is simplest for one-person local use; self-hosting is best when you want everything on your own hardware.

When you create or update a note in Atomic, an asynchronous pipeline can automatically:

  1. Chunk the content using markdown-aware boundaries
  2. Generate vector embeddings via your configured AI provider
  3. Extract and assign tags using LLM structured outputs
  4. Build semantic edges to related notes based on embedding similarity

This happens in the background. You can keep writing while Atomic processes the note.

Key Features

Section titled “Key Features”
  • Semantic Search - Find ideas by meaning, not just exact keywords.
  • Wiki Synthesis - Generate articles with inline citations to your atoms.
  • Agentic Chat - Converse with your knowledge base using RAG.
  • Spatial Canvas - Visualize atoms and relationships as a force-directed graph.
  • Auto-Tagging - Extract hierarchical tags from new content.
  • Reports - Scheduled research over your notes; each run produces a cited finding atom.
  • RSS and URL Ingestion - Save web pages and subscribe to feeds.
  • MCP Integration - Connect Claude and other AI assistants.
  • Mobile Access - Connect the iOS app to a self-hosted server.

Choose Your Setup

Section titled “Choose Your Setup”
SetupBest For
Desktop AppPersonal local use, bundled server, no separate hosting
Self-Hosted ServerRemote access, web UI, mobile, browser extension, MCP over HTTP
iOS AppMobile reading, writing, search, and sharing to a self-hosted server

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”