Work / MongoDB Atlas Local
MongoDB
MongoDB Atlas Local
A full Atlas environment on your laptop and in CI, at zero cost, with the same database behaviour developers get in the cloud.
18M+Docker image pulls
2M+npm downloads of the Node library
<1 minTo a running cluster, against 10–15 in the cloud
3Client languages on one Rust core
Figures as of 2026-09-19.
WHAT IT IS
Atlas Local runs a real Atlas deployment locally: search, indexes and the Atlas-specific behaviour that a plain mongod does not have. It exists so that development and CI stop being an approximation of production.
It ships as a Docker image, a standalone CLI, an Atlas CLI plugin, and libraries for Rust, Node and Python, all over one shared Rust core. AI agents reach it through the MongoDB MCP Server, which lets Claude, Cursor and Copilot create and connect to a cluster on their own.
WHAT I DID
DRI · design through delivery
- Led design and delivery of the Atlas Local SDKs: a new Rust library (
atlas-local), a Node.js native add-on (@mongodb-js/atlas-local, via napi.rs) and Python bindings (atlas-local-lib-py), shipped as a standalone CLI, a CLI plugin, and the foundation of the MongoDB MCP Server integration. - Built the Atlas Local Docker image in Go, packing MongoDB and MongoDB Search into one container, so developers and CI pipelines get a real Atlas environment in under a minute, against the 10–15 minutes it takes to provision a cluster in the cloud.
- Opened it to AI agents: over the Model Context Protocol an agent can create a local cluster and connect to it, now a core part of MongoDB's AI tooling.
- Launched with zero post-release bugs, and has since passed 18M Docker pulls and 2M npm downloads.
- Founded a weekly "Learn Rust" programme in anticipation of the team having to work on this project, and by the time the work started everyone knew enough Rust to get going. It still runs today, now as the place the team comes up with new products and experiments.
RustGoPythonNode.jsDockerMCP
WHERE IT SAT
Senior Software Engineer @ MongoDB
Jan 2024 — Present · Dublin, Ireland