# Atlas

Atlas reads and writes your world as plain JSON files, in a folder on your own machine or in your browser's own storage. The folder is the world, and nothing is locked away.

| | |
|---|---|
| **URL** | [atlas.onlyworlds.com](https://atlas.onlyworlds.com) |
| **Type** | Local-first web application (any modern browser; a folder on your drive needs Chrome, Edge or Brave) |
| **Changelog** | [atlas.onlyworlds.com/changelog](https://atlas.onlyworlds.com/changelog) |

## Features

- **Build and Browse.** All 22 element categories in a schema-driven editor. Link fields are pickers, and every element lists what links to it.
- **Write.** Books, chapters and scenes (you set the tier names). Names in your prose become links with a click, and the find bar can link every match at once. The words stay yours.
- **Web.** Any element's connections as a small graph, including everything that links to it.
- **Map.** Your own map images, nested maps, pins for any element, and zones drawn as areas or lines. Zones can be coloured by kind (rivers blue, roads dashed), and the style is saved with the world.
- **Chart.** Place elements on a time axis by their dates, on your world's own calendar. Charts can be saved and added to published pages.
- **Knowledge.** Track who knows what, per character or circle, and see the world as one of them knows it.
- **Calendars.** Custom calendars as a display layer over world time.
- **Local-first.** Worlds are folders of plain JSON files you own, in a folder on your drive or in your browser, and Atlas works offline.
- **One file.** Download the whole world as a single .zip (elements, pages, notes, charts and images, without the OnlyWorlds link and its key). Atlas opens it on any browser as a world of its own.
- **Sync.** Link a world to onlyworlds.com to push and pull. The folder stays the source of truth.
- **Import and Export.** Import and export the same world file onlyworlds.com exports. A world folder written by another tool opens in place.
- **Sharing.** Publish read-only pages of your world to send to anyone. Needs an account; each world can have 20 published pages at a time.
- **Light and Dark.** Both themes across the whole app.

## Getting Started

No signup is needed to start. The first screen leads with two doors: **start a world**, and **Moppetopia**, the public demo world, which opens as an editable copy in your browser that never syncs back. The guided tour, a world folder and the other ways in sit one line below.

Where a world lives: on Chrome, Edge and Brave a new world asks whether it goes in a folder on your drive, where your AI and other tools can work on it, or in the browser, and a browser world can be moved to a folder later. On Firefox and Safari a world lives in the browser, and that is a full home. A new world's Home asks what you have (start fresh, bring in a world from somewhere else, or look around), then shows the next few steps in the order a world tends to grow.

To sync with onlyworlds.com, see [onlyworlds.com](/docs/tools/onlyworlds-com) for accounts and keys.