Key concepts

The handful of building blocks everything in Atlas is made from.

The building blocks

Concept	What it is
Organization	Your company's workspace. Teammates, plan, and settings live here. You can belong to several and switch between them from the sidebar.
Environment	Every organization has live and test. Each has its own licenses, keys, webhooks, and integrations.
Product	An app you sell. Every license belongs to exactly one product.
Policy	A reusable set of terms: license type, duration, device limit, grace period, offline access, and default entitlements.
License	What a customer buys. It has a key, a status, dates, a device limit, and entitlements.
Entitlements	Values on a license that your app reads, like { "plan": "pro", "seats": 5 }. Use them to switch features on and off.
Customer	Who a license was issued to, identified by email or your own ID.
Activation	A device using a license. The device limit caps how many can be active at once.

How a sale flows through Atlas

A customer buys. You issue a license from the dashboard, the API, or automatically from a storefront.
The customer enters the key in your app, which activates their device.
Each time your app starts, it validates the license and unlocks whatever the entitlements allow.
When something changes (a refund, a renewal, a new device), you update the license and the app picks it up on its next check.

Two kinds of keys

License keys (ATLAS-XXXX-…) belong to your customers. API keys belong to you: a publishable key (pk_…) goes inside your app, and a secret key (sk_…) stays on your server. See API keys.