Introduction
What ATHELOS is, who it's for, and how you can run it.
Introduction
ATHELOS is the Pentester's OS — a single command center for running a security practice. It holds everything your work touches: clients, engagements, findings, evidence, reports, invoices, and a searchable knowledge base.
Who it's for
ATHELOS is built for anyone who does the work:
- Solo pentesters running their own practice
- Small teams of two to five working through shared engagements
- Enterprise security teams coordinating across multiple operators
- MSSPs running engagements on behalf of multiple clients
- Government and defense teams working in air-gapped environments
The same platform serves all of them. What changes is how it's deployed.
How you can run it
ATHELOS is available in three deployment models. Pick the one that fits your team.
| Model | Who runs it | Where data lives |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud | We host it | Our infrastructure, isolated per customer |
| Self-hosted | You host it | Your infrastructure |
| Dedicated | We run it for you | Private infrastructure or your data center |
Cloud — zero setup. Sign up, start working in a browser. Monthly billing.
Self-hosted — full control. Run the Docker image on your laptop, VPS, or server. Annual license. Your data never leaves your network.
Dedicated — enterprise and government. Private infrastructure, air-gapped option, custom SLA.
See Deployment options to compare.
What's inside
ATHELOS is organized around five pillars:
| Pillar | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Knowledge | Methodology playbooks, cheat-sheets, search |
| Operations | Clients, engagements, findings, evidence, time |
| Delivery | Reports, PDF export, signed client delivery links |
| Business | Contracts, rate cards, invoices, financials |
| Toolbox | Tools, wordlists, payloads, labs, infrastructure |
Plus two cross-cutting layers:
- AI — local Ollama runtime for semantic search, RAG chat, and assistive actions. In self-hosted, everything runs on your machine. In cloud, on our GPU cluster. Your data never leaves the platform either way.
- Automation — scheduled backups, dependency audits, event bus, and webhook notifications.
Why it exists
A pentester's work is scattered. Notes in one app, findings in another, evidence in a shared drive, reports in Word, invoices in a spreadsheet. Every engagement starts by rebuilding context from six places.
ATHELOS collapses all of it into one pane of glass so nothing falls through the cracks — whether you're a solo operator on a laptop or a fifty-person team running shared engagements across regions.
Requirements
- Cloud — any modern browser. Nothing to install.
- Self-hosted — Node.js 22, Docker, 4 GB RAM minimum (8 GB for AI).
- Dedicated — no local requirements. We provision and hand over access.
Where to go next
- Deployment options — compare the three channels
- Cloud overview — hosted ATHELOS
- Self-hosted quickstart — install on your own machine
- Dedicated deployment — enterprise and government
- Core concepts — how everything fits together