Product manual

Everything ATLAS:Face can do.

ATLAS:Face is a local-first knowledge system for readers, builders, researchers, autodidacts, teachers, creators, and anyone who keeps returning to difficult ideas. This page documents the parts that are easy to miss: the CLI, markdown system, widgets, routines, publishing, plugins, AI tools, and the way sources become cards, notes, maps, and review loops.

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Mental model

A local-first knowledge system, not one more note pile.

ATLAS:Face organizes your work as a hierarchy: vaults contain projects, projects contain topics, and topics contain markdown documents, cards, resources, links, review metadata, layout metadata, and source progress. You can use it simply as a reader with notes, or you can unlock the full system: spaced repetition, AI generation, a visual graph, routines, publishing, plugins, and agent-friendly automation.

Core objects

  • Vaults are top-level folders for a body of work.
  • Projects group a course, research path, subject, or creative effort.
  • Topics are the main working unit. A topic can be a markdown document, a card set, a source session, or all of them at once.
  • Cards are interactive knowledge blocks with titles, content, SRS state, links, layout, and optional code formatting.
  • Resources attach PDFs, EPUBs, and videos to the knowledge they belong to.

How it feels in practice

You can start with a messy source, a question, or a blank topic. Read or watch inside ATLAS:Face, extract what matters into cards and notes, connect the ideas, review them later, and publish the polished version when it is worth sharing.

Sources

PDFs, EPUBs, and YouTube videos become working material.

The Resources panel is the starting point for source-first work. It manages PDFs, EPUB books, and video resources so your reading progress, notes, cards, and comprehension checks stay attached to the topic instead of living in separate apps.

PDF reader

Open and read PDF documents, track page progress, search or inspect text, and keep notes and drawings connected to the source. The progressive reader path is designed for guided document learning with comprehension checks rather than passive page scrolling.

EPUB reader

Read EPUB books with table-of-contents navigation and card creation. The reader can use a focused excerpt around your current page or section for quiz generation, so questions stay anchored to the actual text.

Interactive YouTube player

Study videos with transcript-aware AI tools. The app can generate questions from video content, keep notes beside playback, and help you turn a lecture into something reviewable.

Cards and recall

Cards are movable, linkable units of understanding.

ATLAS:Face cards are more than flashcards. They can be arranged on a canvas, edited in place, linked with typed relationships, turned into review material, shown as a slideshow, split or expanded with AI, and exported through markdown.

Card viewWork with cards as interactive blocks inside a topic. Edit title and body, format content, move them spatially, and keep context visible.
Spaced repetition reviewReview due cards, rate them from Again to Easy, track stability, difficulty, reviews, lapses, accuracy, speed, and streaks.
Card linkingConnect cards using relationship types such as related, prerequisite, extends, contradicts, and supports.
Bulk add cardsPaste a long text block and split it into many cards with a delimiter, or import markdown where each heading becomes a card.
Presentation modeUse slideshow mode to present topic cards full-screen, then branch into deeper thinking or exercises from the slide.

Markdown documents

Topics are real markdown documents with card-aware structure.

ATLAS:Face keeps topic documents as markdown on disk. This gives you a plain-text base that still powers cards, layouts, SRS metadata, links, and app views. The main rule is simple: content under each level-two heading becomes a card.

Topic markdown format
---
title: Spanish Vocabulary
---

Opening notes before the first card can become topic preamble.

## Hola
Hello

## Gracias
Thank you

## Code example
```js
console.log("cards can preserve fenced code blocks");
```

ATLAS:Face preserves card metadata separately from the markdown document. That means editing the document can rebuild the cards while keeping review state, grid position, links, card type, language, and styling metadata when the card can be matched.

Obsidian-style card files

The Obsidian sync path understands markdown card files with YAML frontmatter, SRS fields, tags, source links, and a front/back split.

---
type: flashcard
id: "1738765432000"
due: 2026-02-06T10:30:00.000Z
ease: 2.5
interval: 1
tags: [history]
source: "[[World War II Notes]]"
---

# What year did WWII end?

---

1945

What markdown is good for

  • Writing topics as normal documents.
  • Generating cards from sections.
  • Keeping notes portable.
  • Syncing with external vault workflows.
  • Letting CLI tools and AI agents update knowledge without clicking through the UI.

Journals and widgets

Your journal can pull live context from the system.

The Journal is a side panel for daily notes, session notes, reflection, planning, and reusable templates. It also supports live widget tokens that expand into snapshots of routines, tasks, focus areas, or the whole day.

Widget tokens

Use these tokens in a journal template or daily note to insert current system state:

{{TODAY}}
{{ROUTINE}}
{{TASKS}}
{{FOCUS}}

What the widgets include

  • Today Snapshot: routine, tasks, and focus in one block.
  • Routine Snapshot: scheduled blocks, time ranges, and completion state.
  • Task Snapshot: active tasks and tasks completed today.
  • Focus Snapshot: active focus areas and their prompts or reminders.

Routines, tasks, and focus

Planning lives beside knowledge work.

ATLAS:Face includes a planning layer because knowledge does not matter much if you never return to it. The routine system, task panel, daily focus, goals, and activity history give you a way to shape repeated work without leaving the app.

Routine planner

Create weekly templates and daily flows with blocks for anchor rituals, flex zones, study, breaks, work, health, personal time, and sleep. Blocks track start time, duration, recurrence, priority, linked content, and status.

Tasks and recurring tasks

Create tasks, recurring tasks, active task lists, completion history, and task activity. Journal sync can reflect checked task changes back into daily notes.

Daily Focus and goals

Set active focus areas, reminders, streaks, and mastery goals. Use them to keep the app oriented around what you actually want to move forward.

Maps and canvas

See ideas spatially when lists stop helping.

The Knowledge Universe and Canvas View are built for the moments where a normal document is too flat. Use the canvas to arrange cards freely. Use the Knowledge Universe to explore how connected cards form a graph.

Canvas ViewArrange cards on a freeform spatial canvas with preserved layout metadata.
Knowledge UniverseOpen a 3D force-directed graph visualization of card relationships and topic structure.
Multi-selectSelect and perform bulk actions on several items when a topic grows large.
SearchSearch across notes and cards from the Activity Rail.

AI tools

AI is a set of workbench tools, not the whole product.

AI features help you generate cards, ask questions about cards, quiz yourself from videos or book excerpts, think deeper about a concept, refine rough cards, split overloaded cards, expand thin cards, and generate exercises or practice exams.

Generation

AI Generate Cards turns pasted content or source material into cards. Video AI generates transcript-based questions. EPUB quiz generation uses the current excerpt when possible.

Conversation

Card AI Chat lets you ask about a specific card instead of throwing your entire workspace into a generic chat box.

Refinement

Think Deeper, Card Splitter, Card Expander, AI Card Refiner, Practice Exercises, and Exam Generator are for turning rough understanding into stronger active recall.

Publishing

Publish notes when a topic is worth sharing.

ATLAS:Face can turn a topic into a shareable page outside the desktop app. The local-first share flow can create self-contained links, and the GitHub publishing path uses GitHub credentials to push published content to a hosted page. Published content can also receive suggested edits, which you can review before accepting.

Local-first exportCreate a shareable page from topic cards without making your workspace public.
GitHub publishingStore GitHub credentials in the app and publish selected notes or topics to a GitHub Pages-style page.
Edit reviewVisitors can suggest improvements to shared content; you decide what gets accepted.
Polished outputPublished pages preserve markdown rendering, themes, viewed progress, and interactive card reading.

Marketplaces

Install community knowledge and extend the app.

ATLAS:Face has two related marketplace ideas. The Community Marketplace is for shared vaults, projects, and topics. The Plugin Marketplace is for installable app extensions that add panels, actions, services, visualizations, and workflows.

Community content

Browse shared learning material by category, search by name or tags, inspect details, install content, and export your own projects or topics for publishing.

Plugins

Plugins can add UI, listen to app events, register commands or keybinds, use local storage, and integrate with cards, review, lessons, and app-ready lifecycle hooks.

CLI

The af CLI is for power users and AI agents.

The CLI can create vaults, projects, topics, cards, links, resources, journal entries, notebooks, backups, imports, exports, marketplace actions, and SRS sessions. It is built to be predictable for humans and scriptable for tools like Codex or Claude Code.

CLI quick start
cd cli
npm install
npm link

af status
af vault create "Research"
af project create "Machine Learning" --vault "Research"
af topic create "Transformers" --project "Machine Learning"
af card create --topic "Transformers" --front "What is attention?" --back "A learned weighting over context."
af study start --project "Machine Learning"
af study rate <card-id> --topic "Transformers" --rating 2

Important command groups

  • af status checks whether the app API or direct file mode is active.
  • af data exports, imports, backs up, restores, and shows data paths.
  • af vault, af project, and af topic manage the hierarchy.
  • af card creates, lists, updates, links, deletes, and browses cards.
  • af study starts SRS sessions, rates cards, and shows stats.
  • af journal and af notebook append daily or notebook entries.
  • af market browses, searches, installs, exports, and publishes marketplace content.

Agent-friendly details

  • Every command can use --json for machine-readable output.
  • Most objects can be addressed by name, ID, or vault/project/topic path.
  • The CLI refreshes the running app through its local API when possible.
  • If the app is closed, the CLI writes directly to the local data files.
  • AF_USER_DATA overrides the default data directory.
Bulk import cards from markdown
af topic import-md --file cards.md --project "Math"
af topic import-md --stdin --project "Math" --name "Algebra"
af topic show "Math/Algebra" --cards --json

Plugins

Plugins turn ATLAS:Face into a platform.

Built-in plugins currently include Gamification, Brain Training, Knowledge Universe, Adventure Log, Routine Planner, Daily Focus, Slideshow, Infinite Canvas, Scratchpad, and First Principles. Community plugins use a manifest, an entry module, optional styles, permissions, lifecycle hooks, and a public API contract.

Plugin GitHub repo Starter template Plugin SDK Example plugin
Minimal plugin shape
my-plugin/
  manifest.json
  plugin.js
  README.md
  styles.css

Plugin lifecycle

  • activate(ctx) runs when the plugin loads.
  • deactivate() cleans up when it unloads.
  • onAppReady() runs after the app finishes initialization.
  • api can expose functions to other plugins.

Plugin context

Plugins receive app state, IPC and notification services, event subscription helpers, permission checks, timers that auto-clean on unload, command and keybind registration, and an optional DOM container.

Template workflow
git clone https://github.com/Resistance-Labs-Tech/atlasface-plugins.git
cd atlasface-plugins
cp -r _template plugins/my-plugin
node scripts/validate-manifest.mjs plugins/my-plugin/manifest.json

Settings and customization

Make the system as quiet or as powerful as you want.

The feature profile system lets you choose how much of ATLAS:Face is visible. Use Study Session for source-first studying, Essentials for flashcards and notes, Balanced for core tools plus goals and light progress features, Power User for everything, or Custom to toggle features one by one.

Feature profilesControl whether advanced tools like marketplace, canvas, AI tools, graph, tasks, routines, and viewers are visible.
Theme CreatorDesign and customize app themes instead of accepting one fixed look.
Keyboard shortcutsAssign quick access to tools through settings.
Vault locationChoose where vault folders and topic markdown files live on disk.
Spaced repetition settingsSet review-session card limits and manage ignored cards.
Obsidian syncConfigure vault path, cards folder, daily notes folder, watch mode, flashcard callouts, and routine/task sync to daily notes.
Discord Rich PresenceOptionally show study activity on your Discord profile.

Start small, then let the system grow.

Open one source, make a few cards, write the messy notes, and let ATLAS:Face connect the rest over time. The power tools are there when you need them, but the app starts with the oldest useful loop: read, think, remember, return.

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