---
title: Atlas public access and authentication
description: Truthful access statement for Atlas browser, REST, MCP, and A2A reads.
canonical: https://atlas-news-intelligence-api.atlas-news-surface.workers.dev/auth.md
last-updated: 2026-08-27
---

# Atlas public access and authentication

## Discover

Atlas exposes a public, read-only REST API, MCP server, A2A agent, browser explorer, and documentation. The machine descriptions are linked from [llms.txt](https://atlas-news-intelligence-api.atlas-news-surface.workers.dev/llms.txt) and the [agent resource catalog](https://atlas-news-intelligence-api.atlas-news-surface.workers.dev/.well-known/ard.json).

## Pick a method

No authentication method is required or supported for the deployed public reads. Do not send an API key, bearer token, cookie, identity assertion, or personal provider credential.

## Register

There is no public registration endpoint, `register_uri`, account creation flow, OAuth authorization server, or dynamic client registration. Atlas must not be represented as supporting one.

## Claim

No identity claim, `agent_auth` credential, or `id-jag` assertion is issued or accepted. Access is anonymous because every deployed operation is read-only.

## Use the credential

No credential is used. Call the documented HTTPS endpoints directly and honor rate-limit response headers. MCP and A2A requests remain read-only even though their transports use POST.

## Errors

REST failures use a typed JSON envelope with a machine-readable `error.kind`, human-readable message, retryability, and request metadata. MCP uses JSON-RPC error codes and messages. A 429 includes `Retry-After`.

## Revocation

There is no public credential to revoke and no revocation endpoint. If the access model ever changes, this document and the machine descriptions must change before protected operations ship. Atlas does not emit a `WWW-Authenticate` challenge because the published resources are not protected.