AI + atlas

Using AI to run atlas

An AI assistant with access to your computer can run atlas for you: it writes the commands, runs them, reads the output and explains the results. Here we describe how to do this with Claude Code, Anthropic’s command-line assistant.

AI assistants make mistakes. Check the commands it runs and the results it reports, as you would for any computation.

The atlas guide for Claude

claudeAtlas.md is a short reference that teaches Claude how to drive atlas: how to start the program and load the library, how to run it non-interactively, the essentials of the axis language, useful commands and common pitfalls. Claude reads it at the start of a session, so it doesn’t have to rediscover these things each time.

It is plain text (Markdown), and useful to people as well.

Setting it up

Install atlas. See Software. Check that you can start it from the atlas-scripts directory with ../atlas all.at.
Install Claude Code and sign in, following the instructions at claude.com/claude-code.
Make a working folder, for example ~/atlas-claude, and save claudeAtlas.md in it.
Tell the guide where atlas is. Open claudeAtlas.md in a text editor and change the path in section 0 to your atlas-scripts directory:
```
ATLAS_SCRIPTS = /home/you/atlasofliegroups/atlas-scripts
```
Have Claude read the guide in every session. Claude Code automatically reads a file called CLAUDE.md in the folder where it starts. Create one that points to the guide:
```
echo "@claudeAtlas.md" > CLAUDE.md
```
Start Claude Code in that folder:
```
cd ~/atlas-claude
claude
```
Then ask it to do things in ordinary language. Claude asks for permission before running a command; you can let it run atlas without asking each time.

What to ask

Some requests to start with:

“Start atlas and compute the dimension of Sp(4,R).”
“Print the block of the trivial representation of Sp(4,R) and explain what the columns mean.”
“Is the trivial representation of SL(2,R) unitary? Show me the atlas commands you used.”
“Where is the function trivial defined in the atlas library, and what does it do?”
“Write an atlas script that loops over all real forms of G2 and prints their names, and save it as g2.at.”

Behind the scenes, Claude runs atlas in batch mode, feeding it commands and reading the output. For example:

cd /home/you/atlasofliegroups/atlas-scripts
printf 'set G=Sp(4,R)\nset p=trivial(G)\np\ndimension(G)\nquit\n' | ../atlas all.at

which prints

Variable G: RealForm (overriding previous instance, which had type RealForm)
Variable p: Param
Value: final parameter(x=10,lambda=[2,1]/1,nu=[2,1]/1)
Value: 10
Bye.

More examples of atlas sessions run with Claude will be added here.