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Overview

Atlas is civic discovery infrastructure for finding source-linked people, organizations, and initiatives working on public problems. You can use the hosted public project at atlas.rebuildingus.org, build against the API, run Scout, or self-host an Atlas instance. Atlas is maintained by The Rebuilding America Project, a nonprofit steward. The public map, trust model, API, self-hosting path, and developer tooling are built for civic research beyond any single campaign, show, client, or organization.

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Repository

The full source code is available at github.com/RebuildingAmerica/atlas. The repository includes:
  • app/ — Web application (TanStack Start + React + TypeScript)
  • api/ — REST API and autodiscovery pipeline (Python + FastAPI)
  • scout/ — Local discovery CLI and review/sync workflow
  • libs/ — Shared models, taxonomy, and discovery engine primitives
  • mintlify/ — This public documentation site
  • docs/ — Contributor, architecture, product, deployment, and standards docs
Atlas is licensed under MIT. The license permits use, copying, modification, distribution, sublicensing, and sale of the software under the terms in the repository license file.

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Public And Hosted Surfaces

The hosted public product at atlas.rebuildingus.org is the easiest way to search and browse Atlas. The API, MCP server, Scout CLI, and self-hosting guide make the same civic discovery work usable from other tools and deployments. Some workspace and operator features are built for hosted Atlas. Contributions touching those areas should preserve clear public/private boundaries and source provenance.

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Relationship to Rebuilding America

Atlas is maintained by The Rebuilding America Project. The nonprofit provides stewardship, public-benefit discipline, and a real use case for source-linked civic research. Atlas is useful for journalists, organizers, researchers, developers, nonprofits, funders, civic educators, and public users who need to find and verify civic work. For Rebuilding America, Atlas helps identify credible local people to feature, compare civic work across places and issues, and make research reusable.

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Self-hosting

You can run your own Atlas instance on your own infrastructure. The self-hosting guide covers the recommended deployment topology, environment configuration, persistent storage, and verification steps.

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Contributing

Useful contributions make Atlas easier to understand, verify, self-host, or use responsibly. Good starting points:
  • Documentation that clarifies setup, self-hosting, trust, API, Scout, or public/private boundaries
  • Small fixes tied to what users can see, trust, understand, or do
  • Data-quality workflows that preserve source evidence and review state
  • Public-safe improvements to API, MCP, or Scout behavior
See the contributing guide for setup instructions and code conventions.