1. First steps
1.1 Welcome to Atollo
What Atollo is, what you find inside and how this guide is organized. The place to start if it is your first time.
In short
- Atollo is a complete development environment that lives in a single folder: on a USB stick, an external disk or the PC's own disk.
- It does not install and does not ask for administrator rights: copy the folder to another PC and you find everything again, projects included.
- Inside you find languages in several versions, databases, web servers, an editor, consoles, Git and GitHub, four AI agents and local language models.
- This guide goes from the simplest things to the most technical ones: you can read it in order or jump to what you need.
What it is, in simple words
Picture a work backpack that is already packed: inside is everything you need to write programs and websites, tidy and working. You carry it with you, open it on any computer and work, without installing anything and without leaving a mess on the PC that hosts you. When you are done, you close it and take it away.
Atollo is that backpack. It is a single program that sits in a folder together with two subfolders: projects, where your projects live, and data, where the kit keeps its programs, settings and database data. It works on Windows 10 and 11, macOS and Linux, with x64 and ARM64 processors (on ARM64 Windows 11 is needed).
What you find inside
| What | What it is for | Where it is in the app |
|---|---|---|
| Projects | Your working folders, each with its own actions, versions, database and website. | Projects |
| Languages and tools | Python, Node.js, PHP, Java, .NET, Go, Rust and many others, even several versions side by side. | Tools |
| Databases | A MySQL server and a MongoDB one, for this PC only, with passwords already set up. | Databases |
| Web servers | Caddy and Apache, to see your websites at addresses like mio-sito.localhost. | Web Servers |
| Editor | VSCodium, the free version of Visual Studio Code, in an Atollo window. | Projects › Editor |
| Console | PowerShell 7 with all the kit's tools ready to use. | Terminals |
| Git and GitHub | Git and GitHub CLI with a single sign-in to your account for the whole kit. | Settings › GitHub account |
| AI agents | Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity and Pi, with shared instructions, skills and MCP servers. | AI › Agents |
| Local models | Language models on the PC, with no network and no account, for Pi and for a chat in the browser. | AI › Local models |
Three ideas to keep in mind
Everything in one folder
The kit takes care of the tools
Only on this PC
How this guide is organized
The guide has nine chapters. The first three are for everyone: how to get started, how to work on projects, how to use databases and websites. Then agents, tools and settings. The “How it works inside” chapter is for those who want to understand the technical details; the last one gathers common problems, frequently asked questions and a glossary.
In every topic you find: an “In short” box at the start, the steps to follow, tips and warnings, and a collapsed “Under the hood” part with the technical details (files, folders, commands). Under the title of every topic is the app page it is about. The search box above the chapters searches titles, descriptions and keywords.