Work Atom

Also: canonical atom, production atom

A work atom is one instance of production work on a real project: a discrete, repeatable piece of work with a stable identity, scheduled, priced, and audited the same way everywhere it appears. Its kind comes from the catalogue. XPMS 3.0 defines 624 canonical elements, and an atom is an element put to work on a project. Releases before 3.0 used "atom" for the catalogue entry itself; since 3.0 the catalogue unit is the element and the atom is the instance. The Atlas ecosystem seeds new organizations with the element catalog as their starter task and asset vocabulary, and ties tasks and budget lines back to the atoms drawn from it.

Last updated June 18, 2026