LaSuite Apps + Atmosphere Accounts

The French government has been building out a collection of open source apps for use by their public servants called LaSuite.

LaSuite is led by the Direction Interministérielle du Numérique (DINUM) and the Agence Nationale de Cohésion des Territoires (ANCT). Several of the products offered have also been built in close collaboration with the Dutch and German governments.

Some of the apps include:

• Tchap: Secure instant messaging used by over 600,000 public agents, based on the Matrix protocol*¹, with support from Element.
• Visio aka "Meet": Secure video conferencing tool intended to replace software like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. It includes video recording and transcription.
• Docs: Collaborative text editor with Notion-like block based editing, powered by BlockNote.
• Fichiers aka "Drive": Centralized file storage and sharing.
• Grist: Collaborative spreadsheet and database structuring tool. Grist is a separate company, more info in this January 2026 announcement.
• Messagerie aka "Messages": Next-generation email client for public servants, based on JMAP. Shared inbox functionality*².

The ones they are building in-house are all built around Django and permissively MIT licensed. Everything is open source, check everything they've released on their Github account https://github.com/suitenumerique

Connecting Atmosphere Accounts to Apps

I've got a couple of different projects I'm working on that need a shared approach to apps. This is everything from hosting to a combined approach to managing accounts and logins.

• Bring Your Own Computer: my research lab install on an OVH bare metal server in Canada.
• Commons Computer: a @dwebyvr.org project in shared compute using Cloudron @commonscomputer.com, which also has hosted infra for @atmosphere.community - the original Ghost blog, a shared inbox that we ran @atmosphereconf.org out of.
• Shared Computer Network: community-scale AI @sharedcomputer.network being run out of @z-space.ca

I started installing a few of the LaSuite apps in my research lab and was honestly pretty impressed, and am evaluating them for personal and shared use*³.

I have a core infrastructure component in my architecture to use an AIP install - the atproto to OIDC gateway - so that I can just use atmosphere accounts as logins.

Well, things escalated, and I'm now running a large number of the apps, have tested many of the different features (e.g. video recording, transcription that posts to a Docs file), and am working on implementing group-based access control*⁴ through atproto's emerging permissioned data and groups standards.

And, since we're in the midst of creating an Atmosphere Community Co-Op, I'm also thinking about if the Community Infrastructure Circle*⁵ can host these things "for real", as shared infrastructure for our community to use.

Codename Baguette: This was me having an hour long meeting and things working great!

Help Test the Apps

Running a modified AIP install, I'm going to be allow-listing certain apps, users, and groups.

If you'd like to use any of the apps longer term, just try them out to see how they work, or otherwise get involved in building or sysadmin'ing, please apply here:

The Atmosphere account you login with and its associated email will be used to allow you to login to any of the apps.

There's lots more to discuss about the concept of global accounts used via OIDC in a context that is gated per community. The permissioned data work, the groups primitives, Habitat @habitat.network's approach where they're including an organizational level data work, and so many other creative, emerging atproto projects give us potential tools to build better systems in service of community.

Let me know what you think, and fill out the application form so I can allow-list your DID for testing!