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Atlas Platform

REFERENCE | DERIVED | Updated 2026-04-08 | Owner: Engineering

Atlas is the unified platform replacing per-product backends across Dapper Collectibles. It consolidates NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day, and Disney Pinnacle onto a shared infrastructure with a common design system, configuration layer, and content management approach.

Why Atlas

Before Atlas, each collectibles product ran largely independent backend and frontend stacks. Content configuration lived in Contentful and Retool. Changes required engineering deploys. There was no way to experiment rapidly with page layouts, campaign configurations, or product features without code changes.

Atlas solves three problems:

  1. Unified platform — one infrastructure serving all three collectibles products, reducing maintenance burden and enabling cross-product features.
  2. Configuration over code — product and campaign teams can create and modify experiences without engineering deploys.
  3. AI-native experimentation — the design system is represented as JSON, which means AI agents can generate, modify, and A/B test layouts programmatically.

Architecture Overview

graph TD
    A[Atlas Design System] --> B[json-render]
    B --> C[Atlas Frontend - React]
    D[Atlas API - Backend] --> C
    E[Campaign Builder UI] --> D
    F[AI Campaign Agent] --> E
    G[Feature Flags / VPN Gating] --> C
    D --> H[Product Data - NBA/NFL/Disney]

Key Components

Component Description Repo
Atlas Frontend React app consuming JSON layout definitions atlas-app
Atlas API Backend serving product data and configuration atlas-api
Campaign Builder WYSIWYG editor for creating campaigns and pages Built on Atlas staging
json-render Library that renders JSON layout definitions using actual design system components json-render.dev

How json-render Works

The core innovation is generative UI via JSON. Instead of building pages in code, pages are described as JSON documents that reference components from the Atlas design system. The json-render library takes that JSON and renders it with actual React components.

This means:

  • A campaign manager can create a page layout in the Campaign Builder and see it rendered in real-time
  • An AI agent can generate page JSON, and it renders identically to hand-built pages
  • A/B testing is trivial — serve different JSON to different user segments
  • Changes are instant — no build, no deploy, just update the JSON

What's on Atlas vs. Legacy

Feature/Product Infrastructure Status
Quest (challenges) Atlas Production — fully live, no issues
Top Shot This (TST) Legacy -> Atlas Migrating — directed to move immediately as first NBA production feature on Atlas
NBA Campaigns Legacy Can be created in Atlas tooling to start working on Atlas
NFL All Day Legacy Pending
Disney Pinnacle Legacy Pending
Campaign Builder Atlas staging Staging — 2 PRs pending for v1 (FE: atlas-app#761, BE: atlas-api#632)

Campaign Builder

The Campaign Builder is the primary tool for creating and managing campaigns on Atlas. Built by Jim Wheaton (AI team).

What It Does

  • WYSIWYG editing of campaign pages using Atlas design system components
  • Real-time population — changes are visible as they are made
  • VPN-gated access on staging and production (Alex Grieco's WAF/VPN work)
  • Generates JSON layout definitions that json-render consumes

Current Status

  • Demoed successfully to Leon Li, Spencer Bogad, and Jordan Wilberding
  • 2 PRs pending for v1 (frontend and backend)
  • Working on Atlas staging environment
  • Auth0 admin access + VPN required for access

The AI Experimentation Vision

The Campaign Builder is the bridge between AI intelligence and production changes. The target architecture:

Heimdall detects signal (e.g., engagement drop in segment)
  -> Intelligence layer composes response (new campaign targeting that segment)
  -> Campaign Builder generates the page as JSON
  -> Feature-flagged deployment to targeted users
  -> Heimdall measures result
  -> Feedback loop refines the next campaign

This is what "AI-driven autonomous experimentation" means concretely — the ability to compose, deploy, and measure product experiences without engineering deploys for each iteration.

Migration Roadmap

Phase Scope Status
1 Quest on Atlas Complete — production, no issues
2 TST to Atlas In progress — CEO directive to move immediately
3 NBA campaigns on Atlas Next — campaigns just need to be created in Atlas tooling
4 NFL and Disney products Planned
5 Full platform consolidation Target state

Engineering Contact

Atlas migration is jointly owned by Eric Lin (VP Engineering) and Matt Schorr (Executive Producer, Collectibles). The Campaign Builder is owned by Jim Wheaton on the AI team.

Access

  • Staging: Requires VPN + Auth0 admin credentials
  • Production: VPN-gated for internal tooling

This section needs enrichment from the engineering team

Specific API documentation, deployment procedures, and detailed schema information for Atlas should be added by the engineering team. The architecture diagrams above are derived from meeting notes and design documents, not from direct codebase inspection.