Connect Azure DevOps

You can author Templates and run Mock Preview without any connection. Connect a project when you want to preview real Stories, validate against project fields, or create Tasks.

Supported platforms

Atomize reads Stories and creates Tasks through a Platform Adapter. Connected workflows currently support Azure DevOps Services, at https://dev.azure.com/{organization} or https://{organization}.visualstudio.com. Azure DevOps Server (on-premises) is not supported.

Platform	Use it for	Connection Profile
Azure DevOps Services	Live Preview, Online Validation, Grounding, and Task creation	Required
Mock	Mock Preview, plus CLI dry runs against sample Stories	Not needed

Mock Preview runs offline in VS Code and the CLI against a Mock Story you enter. It never connects to a platform or creates Tasks. In the CLI, atomize generate <template> --platform mock also dry-runs a Template against built-in sample Stories: see Mock Platform.

GitHub Copilot drafts and improves Templates. It is not a work item platform and does not use a Connection Profile: Atomize uses your locally signed-in Copilot account.

Mock Platform

The mock platform provides sample data for testing and development.

Usage

atomize generate template:backend-api --platform mock

Features

• No configuration required
• Sample user stories with various states and tags
• Simulated network delays
• Perfect for template development and testing

Sample Data

The mock platform includes 7 sample stories:

STORY-001: Implement user authentication API
  State: New, Tags: backend, api, security
  Estimation: 8 points

STORY-002: Create user profile dashboard
  State: Active, Tags: frontend, react, ui
  Estimation: 5 points

STORY-003: Implement payment processing
  State: New, Tags: backend, api, payment
  Estimation: 13 points

STORY-004: Add search functionality
  State: Approved, Tags: fullstack, search, api, frontend
  Estimation: 8 points

STORY-005: Optimize database queries
  State: New, Tags: backend, database, performance
  Estimation: 3 points

STORY-006: Mobile responsive design
  State: New, Tags: frontend, mobile, css
  Estimation: 5 points

STORY-007: Implement data export feature
  State: Active, Tags: backend, api, export
  Estimation: 8 points (has 1 existing task)

Testing Workflows

1. Template Development:

# Create template
atomize template create --scratch --save-as test-template

# Test with mock data
atomize generate test-template.yaml --platform mock

# Iterate until satisfied

2. Filter Testing:

# Test different filters
atomize generate test-template.yaml --platform mock

# Check which stories match
# Adjust filter criteria
# Repeat

3. CI/CD Testing:

.github/workflows/test.yml

- name: Test Templates
  run: |
    for template in templates/*.yaml; do
      atomize validate "$template"
      atomize generate "$template" --platform mock
    done

Required permissions

A Connection Profile holds an Azure DevOps organization URL, project, team, and a Personal Access Token (PAT). Create the PAT at https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/_usersSettings/tokens and choose the scopes your workflow needs:

PAT scope	Access	When you need it
Work Items	Read & write	Always. Atomize reads Stories and work item metadata, and creates Tasks.
Project and Team	Read	Grounding: grounded AI drafts and improvements in every tool. Grounding lists the project's teams and fails without this scope.
Wiki	Read	Only to use wiki pages as Reference Documents. Without it, everything else works and Atomize tells you to rotate the token when a wiki page is needed.

Your Azure DevOps account also needs permission to create work items in the project, for example through the Contributors group. Atomize can only do what both the token's scopes and your account allow.

Profiles keep tokens out of Templates: an Atomize YAML File never contains credentials, and the VS Code atomize.defaultProfile setting stores only a profile name.

Set up your tool

Each tool manages Connection Profiles in its own place.

• VS Code: run Atomize: Manage Profiles, or import your CLI profiles once.
• CLI: run atomize auth add, then use profiles in scripts and CI.

Not connected yet? Start with a Mock Preview in VS Code, or the CLI.