Skip to main content
AI Registry has two apps: the web app at app.atlan.com, which runs in your browser, and Atlan Desktop, which you install on macOS or Windows. Both are the same product, signed in to the same account, reading and writing the same workspaces and records. A skill, agent, session, or setting you change in one shows up in the other. The difference is your computer. The web app can’t read your files or start programs on your machine, so everything that needs them lives in Desktop. Everything else works the same in both.

​
The rule of thumb

  • Use the web app to find, review, share, and govern: skills, agents, sessions, traces, evals, usage, Metrics Studio, Ontology, and organization settings. You can also run work sessions with the Atlan agent or a registered agent.
  • Install Atlan Desktop to bring in what is on your computer, or run something on it: local skills, local Claude Code and Codex sessions, and local coding agents.

​
What works in both

​
What needs Atlan Desktop

Where a feature needs Desktop, the web app tells you and offers Open in desktop app, which opens the same page in Desktop. If you don’t have it yet, choose Get the desktop app in your account menu, or see Install Atlan Desktop.

​
Sessions from your computer

The web app doesn’t collect sessions from your computer by itself. Sessions from local coding agents reach AI Registry through one of these, whichever app you then view them in:
  • Atlan Desktop syncs local Claude Code and Codex sessions.
  • The Claude Code trace plugin sends Claude Code sessions without Desktop, and an administrator can deploy it across a fleet.
  • The atlanai SDK or any OpenTelemetry exporter sends traces from your own agents.
Once a session arrives, it looks the same in the web app and in Desktop.

​
Skills without Desktop

To share a team’s skills without anyone installing Desktop, keep them in a GitHub repository and publish them from GitHub Actions. See Sync skills from GitHub. You can also publish from a terminal with the aireg CLI, or write a skill by hand in the web app.

​
Next steps