Welcome to Project Achilles: What It Is and Where to Find Everything

Series: Getting Started with Project Achilles — Introduction

Difficulty: Beginner 🟢

TL;DR

Project Achilles is an open-source platform that measures whether your security would detect real attacks
It is not a SaaS — every organization installs it themselves (free, Apache 2.0)
The landing page is informational; the resources that matter are the docs, GitHub, and Discord
This post orients you in the ecosystem before you install anything
When you finish, head straight to QS-01 for the installation

The Question Achilles Answers

Does this situation sound familiar?

Executive: "Are we protected against ransomware?"

IT/Security: "Yes, we have Defender, we have the SIEM, we have the firewall..."

Executive: "But... how do we know?"

IT/Security: "..."

You have the tools. You paid for them. But nobody can say with certainty whether those tools would actually detect a real attack.

Project Achilles answers that question. It installs an agent on your machines, simulates real attack techniques, and measures whether your security detected them. The result is a number: your Defense Score.

Defense Score: 73%

→ Of 100 simulated techniques, your defense detected 73.
→ 27 would go unnoticed in a real attack today.

It is not an opinion. It is a measurement.

What Achilles Is NOT

It is not a managed SaaS. The projectachilles.io page looks like a SaaS product page, and that is intentional as far as presentation goes. But the similarity ends there. Achilles is open-source: every institution or organization installs and operates it themselves.

It is not an antivirus or a scanner. It does not protect your machines or look for vulnerabilities. It tests whether what you already have installed actually works.

It does no harm. The simulations are controlled. The agent does not access your data, does not steal credentials, does not move through your network. It is like a fire drill — real enough to measure the response, safe for the building.

The Project's 4 Modules

Achilles has four main components:

1. AI-driven test development
   → Turns threat intelligence into executable tests
   → Validated by cybersecurity experts before publication

2. Agent execution framework
   → Lightweight agents installed on every endpoint to validate
   → Scalable, frictionless — one command to install and done

3. Analytics and measurement
   → Defense Score, MITRE ATT&CK heatmaps, trends
   → Exportable to external platforms (SIEM, dashboards)

4. CLI + AI agent
   → REST API for integrations
   → Command-line interface for advanced operations

The Ecosystem: Where to Find Everything

1. The landing page — projectachilles.io

https://projectachilles.io

The project's presentation page. It explains what Achilles is, use cases, and how to contribute. From here you reach the three resources that matter:

2. The documentation (wiki)

https://docs.projectachilles.io

The most important resource before installing. It covers architecture, components, installation guides, and the API reference. If you have a technical question, start here.

3. The GitHub repository

https://github.com/projectachilles/ProjectAchilles

The complete source code. For the technical reader who wants to see how it is built, contribute, or fork it. The README is a detailed technical description of the project.

4. The community — Discord

"Join the community" button on projectachilles.io

The direct channel to the team and the community. Available in Spanish and English. If you have questions during installation or day-to-day use, this is where you get a fast answer.

Who Achilles Is For

"We are a mid-sized company with no budget for an annual pentest." Achilles is free. You install it yourself and get continuous metrics.

"We need real evidence for audits." Achilles generates technical records of every test — concrete documentation for auditors and regulators (DORA, ISO 27001, TIBER-EU).

"Our IT team manages security but they are not attack experts." You do not need to know how an attack works to use Achilles. The tool does it for you.

"We have a security team and we want to measure our controls." Achilles is the continuous benchmarking missing from most security programs.

Key Takeaways

✅ Achilles measures whether your current security would detect real attacks, with a concrete number ✅ It is open-source (Apache 2.0); every organization installs it themselves — no SaaS ✅ The simulations are safe and controlled ✅ Key resources: docs, GitHub, and Discord, all reachable from projectachilles.io

QS-01: "Install Project Achilles: The Platform in 30 Minutes"

Choose between local Docker (free) or a DigitalOcean VPS (~$8/month) and install the full platform step by step.