<img src="assets/logo.svg" alt="atelier" width="96" align="right"/>
# atelier
Versioned workspaces for humans and AI agents.
atelier answers "what is a workspace in the age of agents": a named, versioned body of work content — code, spreadsheets, contracts, docs — with its own history, journal, profile, and policy, served to humans and agents through the same contracts.
- **Everything is versioned.** No unversioned state; every edit becomes a snapshot. Jujutsu's model is the engine, git is the boundary — every workspace is a real git repo you can clone, pull, and push.
- **Documents diff like code.** One diff library, a fidelity ladder (binary → projected text → rich), and format support shipped as packages. First package: docx → markdown.
- **Actions are recorded.** History records content states; the journal records acts and intent — who, in which session, on whose instruction, with what approval.
- **Agents are first-class.** Sessions, working copies, leases, landing, and a manifest, exposed over MCP and the `atelier` CLI.
Status: pre-alpha, under active design.
## Quickstart
Build the `atelier` binary (the toolchain is pinned in `rust-toolchain.toml`):
```sh
git clone https://github.com/bipa-app/atelier
cargo install --path atelier/crates/cli
```
Tell atelier who you are, then work in a fresh directory. Every `atelier` command snapshots outstanding edits first — there is no save step:
```sh
mkdir -p ~/.config/atelier
cat > ~/.config/atelier/config.toml <<'EOF'
[actor]
name = "you"
kind = "human"
EOF
mkdir demo && cd demo
atelier init
echo "atelier keeps every edit" > notes.txt
atelier journal
echo "no save button, no lost work" >> notes.txt
atelier diff
```
The journal names who did what and when; the diff reads at the highest fidelity the format allows — a changed .docx prints a markdown line diff, never "binary files differ".
From there:
- `atelier watch` — external edits (Finder, any editor) become attributed snapshots within seconds.
- `atelier attach <folder>` — bind an existing folder as the workspace's source.
- `atelier serve --mcp-stdio` — serve the workspace to agents over MCP: sessions, diffs, gated landing, journal.
- `atelier sessions` / `atelier requests` / `atelier approve <id>` — review and land an agent's change.
## The SDK
Everything the CLI does, the `atelier-sdk` crate does directly:
```toml
[dependencies]
atelier-sdk = "0.1"
```
With the actor configured as above, a workspace, a session, one write, and
a landing through the gate:
```rust
use atelier_sdk::{GateOutcome, Instruction, Workspace};
fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
let mut workspace = Workspace::init("demo")?;
let actor = workspace.actor().clone();
let session = workspace.open_session(
&actor,
&Instruction {
summary: "draft the notes".to_owned(),
run_ref: None,
verbatim: None,
},
)?;
workspace.session_write(session.id, "notes.md", "The first note.\n")?;
let outcome = workspace.land(session.id)?;
assert!(matches!(outcome, GateOutcome::Landed { .. }));
Ok(())
}
```
Under `atelier-sdk` sit three crates you can use alone:
`atelier-sdk-diff` (the diff model and fidelity ladder),
`atelier-sdk-docx` (Word documents projected to markdown and diffed),
and `atelier-sdk-remote` (bucket-backed sources over `object_store`).
## Contributing
CI runs the same gates you run locally: `cargo fmt --check`, `cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings`, `cargo test --workspace`. Start with [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) — including how to ship support for a new document format as its own package.
Read next: [`CONTEXT.md`](CONTEXT.md) (the domain glossary), [`docs/adr/`](docs/adr/) (decisions), and [`plans/`](plans/) (PRD and current plan).
License: Apache-2.0