Identity Files

Identity files are the foundation of every conversation with Atlas. They live in <your vault>/atlas/identity/ and are loaded every time you chat. These are the files that make Atlas feel like it knows you.

persona.md

Path: atlas/identity/persona.md

This file defines Atlas’s personality. It sets the communication style, tone, areas of expertise, and how Atlas presents itself. Every time you start a conversation, this file is injected into the system prompt so Atlas always “knows” who it is.

The default persona gives Atlas a thoughtful, capable assistant personality — but you can change it completely. Want Atlas to be more concise? More formal? To focus on a particular domain? Edit persona.md and the changes take effect on your next message.

Example edits you might make:

• Add a preferred communication style (“Always use bullet points for lists”)
• Specify domains of focus (“I primarily use Atlas for software engineering and writing”)
• Set a preferred response length (“Keep responses concise — under 3 paragraphs unless I ask for more”)

user.md

Path: atlas/identity/user.md

This is your profile. It tells Atlas who you are so it can give you more relevant, personalized responses. It has two main sections:

Preferences

The ## Preferences section is for stable information about how you like to work:

## Preferences
- Preferred name: Alex
- Role: Product manager at a B2B SaaS company
- Location: Austin, TX
- Communication style: Direct and concise
- Writing style: Active voice, no jargon

This section is mostly written by you (or edited by you). You can add anything that helps Atlas understand your context.

Snapshot

The ## Snapshot section is an auto-generated 3–5 sentence summary of who you are, updated periodically by Atlas based on what it has learned through your conversations. It captures the most important current facts about you — your role, your main projects, your current priorities.

You don’t need to maintain this section yourself, but you can edit it if the auto-generated summary is wrong or outdated.

Tip

After major life changes — a new job, a move, a big project wrapping up — tell Atlas in chat and ask it to update your profile. Atlas will use the update_memory tool to revise user.md immediately.

intro.md

Path: atlas/identity/intro.md

This file contains first-run onboarding instructions for Atlas. When you set up a new vault, Atlas reads this file and uses it to introduce itself and ask you a few questions to learn about you.

Once you complete setup, this file is renamed to intro.md.done. Atlas won’t use it again, but it stays in your vault so you can see what the original instructions were.

If you ever want to redo the onboarding — for example, after setting up a vault for a new purpose — you can rename intro.md.done back to intro.md and Atlas will use it again on your next conversation.

Editing Identity Files

All three files are plain Markdown. You can open and edit them directly in any text editor, or from within Atlas by navigating to the atlas/identity/ folder in your vault.

Changes take effect on your next message — there’s no need to restart the app.

Caution

If you delete persona.md or user.md, Atlas will fall back to generic defaults and won’t have any personal context about you. These files won’t be recreated automatically — you’d need to create them again manually or reinitialize the vault.

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Next: Long-Term Memory