Mass AI Atlas
The living map of Massachusetts' AI ecosystem — built by the community for the community and founders, presented by
The Open Accelerator (an initiative between the
MA AI Hub, Red Hat & IBM).
Four ways to explore the Massachusetts AI ecosystem:
- 🗺️ Map — every VC, lab, accelerator and community pinned across Massachusetts
- ✨ Galaxy — an animated network of how the ecosystem connects (spinouts, funds, hosts)
- 🧭 Founder Journey — resources curated by stage, from first spark to scale
- 📇 Directory — full-text search with category and stage filters
Each entry's drawer says what the organization offers founders, shows when a maintainer
last verified it, and under places to meet lists the cafés, quick bites and quieter
spots within a five-minute walk.
Every entry and view is linkable — ?entry=csail opens straight to an organization,
#galaxy to a view (there's a 🔗 Copy link button in each entry's drawer).
Building on this as a template? Start with HACKATHON.md: setup, the
architecture on one page, where to extend it, and what to change because it is still
pointed at The Open Accelerator.
Run it
It's a static site — no build step.
The hosted live page is at https://the-open-accelerator.com/ecosystem/
# locally
python3 -m http.server # then open http://localhost:8000
Opening index.html straight from file:// doesn't work: the page fetches its data
from data/*.yml, which browsers block on file://. Use the local server above.
The maintenance scripts (scripts/) need Node 20+ and the two npm dependencies
(js-yaml, Ajv): run npm ci once.
Deploy
Merging is publishing. A GitHub Action deploys index.html, atlas-data.js,
data/ and the map style to the live site on every
merge to main that touches them — it re-validates the data first, then rsyncs to
the server and posts a summary to the TOA Slack. (Not GitHub Pages.)
Manual fallback, from a checkout with SSH access to the server:
./scripts/sync-to-site.sh <destination>
The page must be served at a directory URL (…/ecosystem/, trailing slash) so the
relative data/ fetches resolve.
If the repo ever moves (or you host your own copy): set GH_REPO in
index.html (search for const GH_REPO) to your org/repo so the in-app
Suggest and Flag buttons point at the right issue forms.
Contribute
The atlas is community-maintained:
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the entry schema and review process.
Every PR is automatically validated by CI, and a maintainer can
hand your suggestion to the atlas bot, which drafts it as a pull request
(geocoded and validated) for human review — nothing publishes without a maintainer
merge.
Maintainers turn accepted issues and PRs into entries — see
MAINTAINING.md for the step-by-step process.
Repo layout
index.html the app — one file of HTML/CSS/vanilla JS (Leaflet +
MapLibre GL, Tailwind & web fonts via CDN; TOA-branded)
data/entities.yml the dataset — this is what you edit
data/categories.yml, stages.yml the categories and founder stages
data/*.schema.yml JSON Schemas for the three data files
atlas-data.js shared loader: parses data/*.yml + validates against
the schemas (used by index.html and scripts/)
package.json npm deps for the scripts (js-yaml, Ajv) — `npm ci`
map-style-dark.json the dark basemap style (OpenFreeMap fiord + our grafts)
scripts/validate.js schema + integrity validation (runs in CI and locally)
scripts/load-data.js Node wrapper around atlas-data.js — scripts load data via this
test/data-refactor-equivalence.test.js one-time check that data/ matches the old data.js
scripts/stale.js freshness report — entries longest unverified
scripts/export-csv.js export the dataset to a spreadsheet-friendly CSV
scripts/issue-to-entry.js the suggestion bot's form parser / entry builder
scripts/fetch-events.js events aggregator — feeds /ecosystem/events/ weekly
scripts/build-events-page.js assembles events/index.html (generated — see docs/)
scripts/trigger-weekly-events.sh server-side cron that starts the weekly refresh (GitHub cron is late)
scripts/sync-to-site.sh manual deploy fallback (CI normally deploys on merge)
.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/ suggest & flag forms
.github/workflows/validate.yml CI validation + freshness summary on every data PR
.github/workflows/deploy.yml auto-deploy to the live site + Slack notification
.github/workflows/suggest-to-pr.yml the suggestion bot (maintainer-gated, drafts PRs)
.github/workflows/weekly-events.yml Monday 7am ET events refresh + Slack post
docs/events-guide.md how the events page & weekly refresh work
CONTRIBUTING.md entry schema & contributor workflow
MAINTAINING.md maintainer guide — turn issues & PRs into data/entities.yml
PROJECT_STATE.md architecture, decisions & backlog (start here if new)
The data
The atlas is also an open dataset — the only maintained, human-verified dataset of
Massachusetts' AI ecosystem. Two machine-readable endpoints regenerate on every
deploy:
Columns/fields include name, category, location, lat/lng, website, description, tags,
founder stages and the month a maintainer last verified the entry.
To regenerate locally: node scripts/export-json.js and node scripts/export-csv.js.
Methodology: every entry is checked by a human against the organization's own
website plus an independent source before it ships, and re-verified on a rolling
basis (lastVerified records the month; entries more than a year unverified are
flagged in the app). Defunct or unverifiable organizations are removed.
License: the dataset is licensed under
CC BY 4.0 — free to use, share and
adapt with attribution to The Open Accelerator. Suggested citation:
"Mass AI Atlas, The Open Accelerator — the-open-accelerator.com/ecosystem".
Some pin locations are approximate (neighborhood-level) and community groups move
between venues — check official sites before visiting. Curated since June 2026.
© 2026 The Open Accelerator.
