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Topic guide

Elixir and the BEAM for AI systems

Every AI agent framework ships in Go or Python, and almost nobody asks why — or what it costs. The posts below make the unfashionable argument: the runtime agents actually want has existed since 1986, the language AI writes best is the one with the fewest ways to go wrong, and boring stacks ship faster than exciting ones.

Start with the concurrency-model post if you're evaluating stacks — it's the foundation the rest build on. The BEAM-for-agents post applies it to agent architectures, the Go post is the steelman for the mainstream choice, and the Ruby post is for when the right answer is the stack you already have.

The reading order

  1. 1.

    Elixir's Concurrency Model Is the One You Actually Want

    The foundation: processes, supervision, and why the concurrency model other stacks fake with queues and retries is the default here.

    May 16, 2026 14 min read

  2. 2.

    Elixir's BEAM Is the Runtime AI Agents Want

    Agents are long-running, stateful, failure-prone processes — exactly the workload the BEAM was designed for four decades ago.

    May 31, 2026 12 min read

  3. 3.

    Why Every AI Agent Framework Is Written in Go (And What That Costs You)

    The steelman: why every agent framework picked Go, and the supervision, hot-code, and state-recovery costs hiding in that choice.

    May 16, 2026 12 min read

  4. 4.

    Elixir Is the Language AI Codes Best

    Pattern matching, immutability, and a small surface area — why LLMs generate better Elixir than Python or TypeScript.

    May 27, 2026 8 min read

  5. 5.

    Ruby Isn't Dead, It Got Boring — And Boring Is Why It Ships

    The counterweight: boring is a feature. If the team knows Rails, the right AI stack might be the one that ships this quarter.

    May 16, 2026 12 min read

  6. 6.

    Build an AI Agent Loop in 50 Lines of Elixir

    The whole argument, executable: observe-decide-act in 50 lines with no framework — a GenServer doing what agent frameworks abstract.

    June 21, 2026 10 min read

  7. 7.

    15 Elixir Libraries I Reach For in 2026

    The day-one Hex install list — what each library earns its place doing, and the ones that got dropped along the way.

    June 23, 2026 13 min read

  8. 8.

    RAG in Phoenix: Hand-Rolled pgvector or Arcana?

    You don't need a vector database — the Postgres you already run does RAG fine. The hand-rolled path, and when Arcana earns its place.

    June 18, 2026 9 min read

  9. 9.

    The Ruby to Elixir Migration That Cut Our Service Footprint From Ten to Six

    The production receipts: ten services to six at InsideTrack, the migration order that worked, and when not to migrate.

    February 9, 2026 9 min read

Other topic guides

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