explaingit

nicholas-kloster/nuclide-atlas

0PythonAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 3/5ActiveLicenseSetup · moderate

TLDR

An internal observability tool that probes localhost, Docker, or a Kubernetes namespace and renders an interactive map of the AI models, RAG pipelines, vector stores, tools, and agents a team is running.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((nuclide-atlas))
    Inputs
      Local ports
      Docker containers
      Kubernetes namespace
      YAML inventory
    Outputs
      Topology graph
      Risk badges
      Trace Query animation
      Live Pulse colors
    Use Cases
      Map an AI stack
      Audit auth on internal models
      Show RAG and tool wiring
      Spot blast radius of an agent
    Tech Stack
      Python
      Docker
      Kubernetes
      YAML

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Visualize every LLM, vector DB, and agent running on a dev cluster

USE CASE 2

Spot risky internal endpoints that have no auth

USE CASE 3

Replay a request path through safety, RAG, and tools

USE CASE 4

Boot a mock Ollama, vLLM, and Qdrant demo in 30 seconds

Tech stack

PythonDockerKubernetesYAML

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Real maps need Docker plus optional kubectl access; the demo path stays on loopback and has no external deps.

MIT lets anyone use, change, and redistribute the code as long as the original copyright and license notice stay with it.

In plain English

Nuclide Atlas is a tool that draws a picture of the AI services a team is already running. It points at localhost, a URL, a Kubernetes namespace, or a YAML inventory and produces a graph showing language models, endpoints, deployments, retrieval pipelines, vector databases, tools, and agents, with the edges between them showing what is wired to what. Clicking any node opens a side panel with its configuration and a metrics snapshot. The README opens with the problem. Teams running modern AI tend to have stacks they cannot fully describe: someone stands up Ollama on a dev VM, a platform team deploys vLLM behind an internal load balancer, an agent framework wires several tools and RAG pipelines together, and no one outside the team can say which one of those touches customer data. Inventory tools assume you already know the inventory, and generic dashboards show metrics but not topology. Atlas tries to fill that gap by making the running stack the source of truth. There is a 30-second demo path that uses bin/atlas-demo to spawn mock Ollama, vLLM, and Qdrant services on loopback and open a browser. For a real stack you run bin/atlas-bootstrap, which checks environment variables such as OPENAI_API_BASE and OLLAMA_HOST, sweeps a catalog of known LLM ports on localhost, reads docker ps for containers running known LLM images, optionally reads a Kubernetes namespace through kubectl, writes the result to config/atlas.yaml, then boots the stack with docker compose. Exit codes are stable so CI tools can branch on them. Multi-arch Docker images are published to GitHub Container Registry for amd64 and arm64. The map supports several actions. Clicking an agent and hitting Highlight Path dims everything outside its blast radius. A Trace Query animation walks a request through safety, RAG, tools, model, and back. A Live Pulse toggle re-probes endpoints every 15 seconds and colors them green, amber, or red. Risk badges dot nodes that fail deterministic rules, such as an internal API with no auth. There is also a search box and layer filters. Atlas is described as internal observability, not a scanner. It only contacts hosts you put in the config. For external discovery the author points at a separate tool called aimap, whose JSON output Atlas can read. It is MIT licensed and the repository has zero stars at the time of writing.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Walk me through running bin/atlas-demo on my laptop and what the mock services look like in the map
Prompt 2
Help me write a config/atlas.yaml entry for my custom vLLM deployment so nuclide-atlas picks it up
Prompt 3
Show me how the bootstrap script in nuclide-atlas decides which Kubernetes namespace to scan
Prompt 4
Explain how the Live Pulse re-probe step works and how I would extend the green-amber-red rules
Prompt 5
Import an aimap JSON output into nuclide-atlas and overlay it on my internal map
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Generated 2026-05-22 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.