Atlas Edge Database

Atlas is an edge-oriented, strongly consistent key-value store that runs across wide-area networks. Each table has a single owner elected through a WPaxos-inspired consensus layer, and ownership can move to wherever the workload is. The project bundles a Caddy module, a Unix-socket command protocol, and tooling for bootstrapping new clusters.

Highlights

• WAN-friendly consensus with tunable quorum tolerances (Fn/Fz).
• Table-level ownership, grouping, and migration support.
• Text-based administrative interface over a Unix socket (documented in docs/reference).
• Native binary/object storage via KEY BLOB commands.
• Caddy integration for TLS termination, bootstrap APIs, and an interactive REPL (caddy atlas).

Project status

Atlas is under active development. APIs and on-disk formats may still change, and some features (such as write-once (WORM) enforcement and SQL surface area) are in flight. See the various *-plan.md files in the repository for design notes.

Prerequisites

• Go 1.25 or newer (as declared in go.mod).
• protoc plus the Go codegen plugins (make caddy/make atlasdb will install them into tools/).
• C toolchain for linking BadgerDB (installed automatically by the Go toolchain on most platforms).

Building

The Makefile bundles the usual developer workflows:

make caddy       # build the Atlas-enabled caddy binary in ./caddy
make atlasdb     # format, lint, and produce the atlasdb binary (stripped caddy build)

Artifacts are copied into the repository root:

• ./caddy – Caddy with the Atlas module compiled in.
• ./atlasdb – identical binary intended for packaging/distribution.

Running a local node

1. Build the Caddy binary (make caddy).
2. Start a seed node using the sample configuration:

   ./caddy run --config atlas/caddy/Caddyfile2

   This creates data in /tmp/atlas2/ and exposes the Unix socket at /tmp/atlas2/socket.
3. (Optional) Start an additional node with atlas/caddy/Caddyfile, pointing its connect directive at the first node.

Example Caddyfile

The bundled templates in atlas/caddy/ are a good starting point. A minimal single-node configuration looks like this:

{
    admin off
    auto_https disable_redirects
}

https://localhost:4444 {
    atlas {
        advertise localhost:4444
        region local
        credentials mySecret
        db_path /tmp/atlas2/
        socket /tmp/atlas2/socket
        # connect https://bootstrap-host:port   # uncomment to join an existing cluster
    }
    tls internal
}

Adjust the db_path/socket locations to suit your environment. When joining a cluster, replace the commented connect line with the bootstrap node address and ensure credentials matches the remote node’s expectation.

Talking to the socket

Use the bundled REPL:

./caddy atlas /tmp/atlas2/socket
> PRINCIPAL ASSUME alice
OK
> KEY PUT sample.row hello world
OK
> KEY GET sample.row
VALUE:hello world
OK
> QUORUM INFO atlas.nodes
Q1 size=1
id=1 region=local addr=localhost port=4444
Q2 size=1
id=1 region=local addr=localhost port=4444
OK

All socket commands, their responses, and binary framing rules are documented in docs/reference/protocol.md and docs/reference/commands.md.

Testing

Run the full validation suite (unit tests, race detector, integration tests, and ACL end-to-end script) with:

make test

Some integration scenarios expect multiple nodes or rely on the generated Caddy binary; review test logs for guidance.

Documentation

• Reference docs: docs/reference/
• Design notes and outstanding work: *-plan.md
• Consensus internals: docs/reference/consensus.md

License

Atlas Edge Database is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. See LICENSE for the full text.