Professional workspace

The professional workspace is the signed-in Atlas experience. It has six destinations: Atlas Explorer, Compare, Ask Atlas, Feed, Settings, and Docs. Atlas Explorer is the map, the county list, expandable county evidence, and suggested follow-up on one address. Compare and Ask Atlas stay dedicated pages. There is no separate Review, Explore, Investigate, or Action destination, and Ask Atlas does not open a side panel.

Sign-in is required. A signed-out visit to a workspace address goes to sign-in and comes back to the address you asked for. An older bookmark is then opened as the matching Atlas Explorer state. Reading these docs does not require a sign-in.

Use current capabilities for what is released, planned, or experimental.

Open Docs from the workspace

Docs is in the workspace navigation. It opens this documentation site in a new browser tab. The workspace tab keeps the page and URL you already had, including supported geography, release, and compare context.

Docs always opens at the documentation home. It does not change with the page you were on, and it does not add field-level help inside Atlas Explorer or Compare. Search and the sidebar are how you move through this reference. A heading link stays on that heading after you reload the documentation tab.

To resume the review, return to the original workspace tab. Its address still has the context you had before you opened Docs.

Workspace destinations

Destination	Address	Status	What you can do
Atlas Explorer	/explore	Available now	See a national or one-state picture, with the map and county list together. Open county evidence or suggested follow-up on that same address.
Compare	/compare	Available now	Compare two counties on aligned measures. Availability stays visible. The page does not rank a winner.
Ask Atlas	/askatlas	Experimental	Ask reviewed-literature questions when that service is enabled. A validated Explorer or Compare reference can be shown and changed, with a return link.
Feed	/app/feed	Present, empty	The destination is in the navigation. It does not yet list items, alerts, or a saved-article library.
Settings	/app/settings	Available now	Save a default jurisdiction and optional profile details, then use account sign-out, export, and removal.
Docs	/docs	Available now	Open this reference in a new tab from the workspace navigation.

/app/review, /app/compare, and /app/assistant permanently open /explore, /compare, and /askatlas. Supported details on those addresses stay. Older addresses such as /overview, /geographic_explorer, /investigate, /app/explore, /app/investigate, and /app/action are not extra destinations. After sign-in they open Atlas Explorer. A valid county on an old investigation address opens county evidence. A valid county on an old action address opens suggested follow-up. An address with no county opens that scope's picture. On a state picture, Atlas Explorer then selects the first published review candidate and writes that county into the address. An address that names a county which does not validate opens with selection=required and does not substitute another county.

One saved evidence-brief address, plan=evidence-brief on /app/action, still opens that brief. It is not a navigation destination. Return to county evidence goes back to Atlas Explorer with the county, scope, release, and period that brief was using. Surveillance planning is not a released workflow.

The workspace footer links to the public Privacy page and to AI / Responsible Use. AI / Responsible Use explains capability maturity for signed-in readers. It does not replace this guide. Evidence labels stay separate from those maturity labels.

How context travels

Workspace pages share a small set of URL details so a direct link or reload can show the same review:

• scope — United States or one state;
• county — one five-digit county FIPS code;
• compare — up to two county FIPS codes;
• dataset — the governed release id when the page has one;
• period — a calendar date when the page supports a period;
• mode — on Atlas Explorer only. Omitted means the map and list. evidence opens county evidence. follow-up opens suggested follow-up for that county.

Atlas Explorer, Compare, and Ask Atlas keep the details that destination accepts. A validated compare pair stays with the county. It is not dropped when you open county evidence. Feed and Settings do not carry this context. Docs does not receive it, because the original workspace tab keeps it.

List sort and page position stay on Atlas Explorer browse. They are not copied into county evidence or Compare.

Atlas Explorer

Atlas Explorer answers where you are looking, whether anything warrants attention, how complete the evidence is, and what to inspect next.

• Choose United States or one state. National scope orients you by state and a bounded county set. It is not a ranking of every U.S. county.
• The map and the county list describe the same release. Use the list when the map is unavailable.
• A review-priority signal focuses follow-up. It is not a diagnosis, a disease-burden estimate, or an individual risk.
• View county evidence expands that county on this address. Back to map returns to the map and list. Compare this county opens Compare. Ask Atlas opens the dedicated Ask Atlas page.
• Suggested follow-up is a section of the same county view. It reads the review result for that county. It does not start an intervention.

A saved default jurisdiction applies only when Atlas Explorer opens without scope or county in the address. An address that already names a scope or county stays on that place. Changing the default does not rewrite a page you already have open, and it does not hide other states or counties.

Loading, empty, unavailable, and error

These are different states. Do not read one as another.

• Loading means the request has not finished. A loading message is not an evidence label and not a score.
• Empty means the release returned no row for that question. An empty county list, or a county with no suggested follow-up, says that nothing was returned. Atlas does not invent a county or a next step.
• Available means governed inputs exist for the claim, including a published zero.
• Limited means a signal exists, and coverage, suppression, sample size, staleness, or another documented limitation constrains how to read it.
• Unavailable means the governed value is absent, invalid, or out of scope. Atlas shows Unavailable. It does not show that gap as zero.
• Unknown stays unknown. An unknown observation period or evidence type is not inferred from a source date.
• Error means the request failed. Retry does not turn that failure into Unavailable evidence. A failed refresh does not keep showing the previous facts as if they were current.

Compare

Compare places two counties side by side.

• Choose First county and Second county. The workspace accepts two counties.
• Each measure row keeps that county's unit, period, and availability. Similar values, different values, and withheld comparisons are labeled. A withheld comparison explains why the values were not treated as a simple difference.
• The page does not produce a winner, a combined score, or a rank.
• View first county evidence and View second county evidence open that county in Atlas Explorer. Ask Atlas about this comparison opens Ask Atlas with the pair as a page reference, not as a request to compare the counties for you.
• Return to Atlas Explorer or Return to county evidence appears when you opened Compare from that place.

If the county list is still loading, the selectors say so. If the list fails, Compare says the published counties could not be loaded. If evidence fails, the page says aligned evidence did not load. Those messages are request states.

Settings

Settings at /app/settings stores a profile for future Atlas Explorer sessions.

• Default jurisdiction is United States or one state from the current Atlas state list.
• Role, organization, and job title are optional. Leaving them empty does not block Atlas Explorer or the rest of the workspace. Role choices include preferring not to say, general public citizen, and district, state, state-director, and national epidemiologist roles.
• Save profile confirms the default only after the account profile accepts the same values. If the save cannot be confirmed, the form keeps what you typed and says the save was not confirmed.
• The note under the jurisdiction control states that saved defaults apply the next time Atlas Explorer opens without a scope in the URL.
• Sign out ends this session. Export and Remove all data are the existing account data-rights actions. Privacy commitments stay on the Privacy page. The workspace footer links to that same public page, links to AI / Responsible Use, and includes Privacy settings for the existing browser analytics choice. Opening Privacy leaves the signed-in workspace and does not ask you to sign in again. AI / Responsible Use stays inside the signed-in workspace.

Settings does not generate, display, or revoke an API key. It does not manage saved comparisons, saved investigations, or alert subscriptions. Those controls are not in this release. API and MCP access are described in API, MCP, and access.

Ask Atlas

Atlas Explorer and Compare include an Ask Atlas control. It opens the Ask Atlas page. It does not open a side panel or a dialog.

When reviewed-literature chat is enabled for that deployment, that page asks the literature service and shows cited evidence or an explicit unavailable-evidence outcome. Explorer and Compare can carry a validated page reference. That reference is labeled on the page, can be changed or cleared, and is not a citation or retrieved surveillance evidence. The return link restores Atlas Explorer or the Compare pair, including the relevant geography, period, and release. An address that does not verify is not shown as evidence.

When literature chat is not enabled, the page says Ask Atlas is unavailable and the other workspace pages stay usable. That message is a service state. It does not mean the county's evidence is absent.

Ask Atlas does not change filters or maps on its own, and it does not run a workflow for you. It has no Structured mode and no Both mode. Showing a comparison reference does not ask the service to compare counties.

A direct link to a conversation that is not saved in this browser says so and lets you start a new chat. History stays in this browser for up to 30 days. It is not a saved research library on Atlas servers.

The separate public workspace at /assistant remains available when that route is enabled. It is not the signed-in Ask Atlas page. See AI-enabled decision intelligence.

County PDF

County evidence can offer a county PDF when published measures share one county, release, and observation period, and Atlas can verify that the file matches the county, observations, sources, period, and caveats on screen.

If that check cannot be completed, the PDF is unavailable. That is not a statement that the report contains none of a period, and it is not a claim that the county has no evidence. A failed download stays an error and can be tried again. The file is not reused from an earlier attempt.

Evidence labels

Workspace evidence uses three labels after a successful response:

• Available — governed inputs exist for the claim, including a published zero.
• Limited — a signal exists, and coverage, suppression, sample size, staleness, or another documented limitation constrains how to read it.
• Unavailable — the governed value is absent, invalid, or out of scope. Atlas shows Unavailable. It does not show that gap as zero.

Loading, empty results, unknown fields, and request failures use their own messages. Read evidence, provenance, and uncertainty before treating a label as a conclusion.