January 13, 2026

287: From RAGs to Rich Workflows

21 minutes

News includes Arcana, a new RAG library for Phoenix that adds vector search and AI Q&A using Postgres and pgvector, a JavaScript embedding library called MquickjsEx that brings MicroQuickJS to Elixir processes, LiveDebugger v0.5.0 with support for LiveView Streams, DaisyUI officially supporting Phoenix in their commercial dashboard templates, Durable - a new workflow engine similar to Temporal, José Valim teasing beautiful type system improvements, the Hologram project receiving an EEF stipend, Jido 2.0 demonstrating swarms of 1,575 agents indexing code in 7 seconds, ElixirConf EU 2026 announcing José Valim and Chris McCord as keynote speakers, and more!

Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/287

Elixir Community News

https://paraxial.io/ – Paraxial.io is sponsoring today's show! Sign up for a free trial of Paraxial.io today and mention Thinking Elixir when you schedule a demo for a special offer.

https://nitter.net/georgeguimaraes/status/2006068635878490310 – Announcement of Arcana, a new RAG library for Elixir/Phoenix

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrieval-augmented_generation – Wikipedia explanation of RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)

https://github.com/georgeguimaraes/arcana – Arcana GitHub repository - adds vector search and AI Q&A to Phoenix apps using Postgres + pgvector

https://github.com/georgeguimaraes/arcana/blob/main/guides/dashboard.md – Arcana dashboard guide for developing and testing RAG setups

https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FG9b-pFpXUAAYIb0.jpg – Screenshot of the Arcana RAG dashboard

https://huggingface.co/BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5 – bge-small-en-v1.5 model that can run locally via Bumblebee for embeddings

https://nitter.net/jskalc/status/2005676915479453869 – Announcement of mquickjs_ex library wrapping MQuickJS runtime

https://github.com/Valian/mquickjs_ex – MQuickJsEx GitHub repository - embeds JavaScript in Elixir processes via NIFs

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/23/microquickjs/ – Simon Willison's article about MicroQuickJS by Fabrice Bellard - JavaScript engine for embedded systems

https://nitter.net/swmansionelixir/status/2000959719440068622 – Announcement of LiveDebugger v0.5.0 with support for LiveView Streams

https://docs.swmansion.com/live-debugger/ – LiveDebugger documentation from Software Mansion

https://nitter.net/daisyui_/status/2004244298024604049 – Announcement of DaisyUI Nexus Dashboard v3.2 with Phoenix support

https://daisyui.com/store/nexus/ – DaisyUI Nexus Dashboard store page - commercial dashboard template supporting multiple frameworks including Phoenix

https://github.com/wavezync/durable/ – Durable workflow engine GitHub repository - a resumable workflow execution engine for Elixir similar to Temporal/Inngest

https://nitter.net/josevalim/status/2006388766202601822 – José Valim sharing type system improvements with beautiful error messages

https://nitter.net/polvalente/status/2006625919964950975 – Paulo Valente sharing work-in-progress on NxEigen

https://github.com/polvalente/nx_eigen – NxEigen GitHub repository - Eigen-based backend for Nx with lightweight memory footprint

https://nitter.net/bart_blast/status/2008163767855522116 – Bart Blast announcing Erlang Ecosystem Foundation stipend for Hologram project

https://hologram.page/blog/hologram-awarded-eef-stipend – Blog post about Hologram receiving EEF stipend support

https://nitter.net/mikehostetler/status/2008217608085241865 – Mike Hostetler demonstrating Jido 2.0 powering 1,575 agents to index a codebase in 7 seconds

https://github.com/agentjido/jido – Jido GitHub repository - AI Agent framework for Elixir

https://bsky.app/profile/theerlef.bsky.social/post/3mboxbgjvn22k – Erlang Ecosystem Foundation invitation to join Working Groups

https://erlef.org/wg/ – EEF Working Groups page listing all available groups

https://nitter.net/elixirconfeu/status/2007132325918720298 – ElixirConf EU 2026 keynote speakers announcement

https://www.elixirconf.eu/ – ElixirConf EU 2026 website - April 22-24 in Málaga, Spain with José Valim and Chris McCord as keynote speakers

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