ATC documentation
atc ships software to robots over SSH. You push a versioned bundle or an OCI
image, the device checks every byte against its digest, and you switch to it
when you’re ready. If the new version misbehaves, you switch back. The device
keeps recent versions on disk, as many as its retention settings allow, so a
rollback to one of them downloads nothing.
New here? Start with Onboarding. You install a released
atc binary, with no repo to clone and nothing to build, and ship your first
verified update in six steps.
| Doc | Type | Read it when you want to… |
|---|---|---|
| Onboarding | Quickstart | Install the released atc CLI and ship your first update. Start here |
| Deploy your first update | Quickstart | Ship an update end to end from a released atc. Covers devices without systemd, containers included, and has a troubleshooting table |
| Logging in | Quickstart | Log a person in to a control plane with atc auth login. Covers the none, token, local and WorkOS modes, several profiles, logout and common errors |
| atc.toml reference | Reference | Write an atc.toml, the default manifest. Covers the schema and every lifecycle-hook detail, from state and phase to @self, @bundle and the environment |
| atc.kdl reference | Reference | Write an atc.kdl, the opt-in alternative to atc.toml. Lists every node you can write today, what atc config lint checks, and what a push still refuses |
| Private CA trust | Guide | Point atc and atcd at a private CA, so a device can enroll with a self-hosted, air-gapped or lab control plane |
| Remote access without a VPN | Guide | Reach a robot behind NAT or an egress-only firewall through the reverse tunnel built into atcd. No mesh VPN, no extra agent, and one config block you can delete |
| Lifecycle hook cutover | Runbook | Find out whether an existing commit.* hook has to move, now that the version pointer flips earlier, inside activate |
| Modules today | Reference | Ship a module, an executable the device runs after a delivery commits, and see which parts of the module vocabulary work today |
| Shared-library resolution | Runbook | Fix a delivered binary that dies with error while loading shared libraries when the library is right there in the tree |
| Device location | Guide | Put a device on the console map. A program on the device sends its position with atcd attr set-location, and four settings decide how often atcd passes it on |
| Error codes | Reference | Look up an ATC-Exxxx code that atc printed |
| Migrating from Mender or balena | Guide | Move an existing OTA setup onto atc. Concept maps, device and CI steps, and a cutover checklist for each |
| Verifying the binary | Reference | Check that the atc or atcd you run is the one we released, with its sha256 digest and the ed25519-signed release index |
Also useful:
- The one-page command cheatsheet, also as a PDF.
- The source, the issue tracker and the contributor docs are in the agency-code repository.
- Agency Tool Company builds
atc. Our site says what we do and how to reach us.