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Nathan Hessler, organizer of ExMex and RBQ Conf, is back four weeks out from ExMex 2026 in Austin. We cover MCing Rails World, how he picks speakers and keynotes for a single track, what running a Ruby conference taught him, and the free CFP he built on Google Sheets that's turning into an agent friendly event harness. Then we get into TUIOS and agents that talk to each other, why PR review still matters, bootstrapping vs VC, and why conferences beat job boards for landing your next role. Use code MentoredFriends for $50 off your ExMex ticket (enter it in the promo code field on the site, not the checkout pop-up). 00:00 - Introduction 01:38 - MCing Rails World and introducing DHH 05:45 - Picking speakers for a single track 08:26 - What makes a great keynote 10:41 - Why he doesn't curate topics 14:01 - Four weeks out: hurry up and wait 16:14 - How RBQ Conf went 18:42 - Scheduling a single track 19:50 - Using AI for conference marketing 21:58 - Privacy and what agents can see 25:36 - A free CFP built on Google Sheets 32:30 - An agent friendly event harness 38:52 - TUIOS and agents that talk to each other 43:23 - Why PR review still matters with agents 45:03 - MCP, skills, and usage rules 51:23 - Building is the easy part 56:30 - Bootstrapping vs VC 59:01 - ExMex promo code and swag 1:06:47 - Why go to conferences 1:09:00 - Hiring, AI slop, and referrals 1:14:02 - Do conferences make money? 1:18:27 - MicroConf comes to Austin 1:23:33 - Remote work still needs in person 1:27:07 - Free community tickets Resources Mentioned: - ExMex: https://exmexconf.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - ExMex community tickets: https://exmexconf.com/community-tickets?utm_source=elixir-mentor - RBQ Conf: https://rbqconf.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - KinSwitch: https://kinswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Connect with Nathan: - X: https://x.com/spune?utm_source=elixir-mentor - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhessler/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Hessler Consulting: https://hesslerconsulting.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Alex Koutmos, CTO of EagleMMS and author of Elixir Patterns, is back with two books in beta: Programming Nerves, which gets web developers building hardware from Livebook, and Elixir For Finance, written with his brother Dimitri on real market and Federal Reserve data. Then we ask whether anyone still buys technical books, and get into running on one server, what canceled trials teach you, and a laid off engineer with 1,000 applications. 00:00 - Introduction 02:41 - Programming Nerves: from Etch A Sketch to joystick 05:36 - The Patio Defender 07:40 - Why the book starts in Livebook 13:12 - Is anyone still buying technical books? 14:40 - DHH's Campfire rewrite and knowing your tools 18:00 - Shipping without a staging environment 20:42 - Cold outreach and email reputation 28:27 - Elixir For Finance: Yahoo Finance and FRED data 33:57 - Info products after AI 38:51 - Start on a single server 43:05 - Lessons from a failed two sided marketplace 47:04 - Splitting EagleMMS with his brother 51:55 - What canceled trials taught me 58:03 - Putting your work out there and ignoring trolls 1:04:45 - Laid off, 1,000 applications, and the death of software engineering 1:10:10 - Standing out in a tough job market 1:15:37 - Niche SaaS for the trades 1:20:21 - Grok Bots for clips and cold email 1:23:21 - AI pricing and platform risk 1:28:08 - Writing books without AI, and where books go next 1:30:18 - AI training and the authors' class action 1:35:24 - Where to find Alex 1:37:24 - What to buy for Programming Nerves Resources Mentioned: - Programming Nerves: https://www.programmingnerves.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Elixir For Finance: https://www.financialelixir.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Nerves Livebook: https://github.com/nerves-livebook/nerves_livebook?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Connect with Alex: - X: https://x.com/akoutmos?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/akoutmos.bsky.social?utm_source=elixir-mentor - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-koutmos-b8b2bb93?utm_source=elixir-mentor Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Mike Hostetler, creator of Jido and ReqLLM, is back for round three. Jido 2.0 hit the top of Hacker News and took his docs server down with it, and Jido v3 betas are already on Hex. We get into agentic back pressure, why models write better declarative Elixir, why most actors don't need an LLM at all, durable workflows with Jido Flow, and the multiplayer harness he's building on OTP. Plus Grok Bots and personal agents, reverse engineering bad IoT apps, and live questions from chat. 00:00 - Introduction 02:56 - The Jido 2.0 launch and a Hacker News hug of death 06:27 - Lessons from Ralph Wiggum loops 08:51 - Why models write better Elixir 11:44 - Agentic back pressure 14:22 - Jido v3's Spark DSL 20:48 - When do you need 10,000 agents? 26:28 - Q&A: A public actor mesh? 27:59 - Actors vs agents: Jido without an LLM 30:38 - Halo 2 NPCs and classical AI 33:36 - What's new in Jido v3 35:03 - Durable workflows with Runic and Jido Flow 39:34 - Property and fuzz testing with agents 42:27 - Who's building on Jido 44:27 - Q&A: TermUI and the Jido harness 48:28 - DASP, the Durable Actor Session Protocol 50:39 - Q&A: Pods, topologies, and the signal bus 55:01 - Grok Bots, Dots, and personal agents 57:20 - Reverse engineering IoT apps with an LLM 1:06:24 - LLMDB and LLM Catalog 1:07:51 - 600 PRs a month and vibe coded PRs 1:12:12 - The Founder Playbook skills repo 1:14:37 - Teaching and community after LLMs 1:17:31 - Will AI replace engineers? 1:22:57 - A hard lesson migrating Killswitch data 1:25:01 - What's next for Jido and the harness Resources Mentioned: - Jido: https://jido.run/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Runic: https://github.com/zblanco/runic?utm_source=elixir-mentor - LLM Catalog: https://llmcatalog.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Founder Playbook: https://github.com/getagentseal/founder-playbook?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Connect with Mike: - X: https://x.com/mikehostetler?utm_source=elixir-mentor - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikehostetler?utm_source=elixir-mentor Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Michael Lubas, CEO of Paraxial.io and the first guest ever on this podcast, is back to check in on the state of security. We get into Microsoft's record Patch Tuesday, why AI keeps lowering the bar for attackers, the OpenAI sandbox escape story, and whether the AI labs are overstating the risk. Michael shares why cheap foundational checks still beat a frontier model, why small companies should skip bug bounties, and why Elixir gets no credit for its security. Plus live questions from chat. 00:00 - Introduction 02:34 - ElixirConf US and the Hex pentest talk 06:20 - Microsoft's record Patch Tuesday 13:50 - Engineers who stopped reading their code 14:54 - LLMs as offensive security engineers 17:40 - Sandbox escapes and the OpenAI incident 23:00 - Are the AI labs overstating the risk? 26:09 - The open weights debate 29:32 - Developer anxiety and the Rails World keynote 35:00 - Why it's getting worse for defenders 38:30 - Run grep before a frontier model 41:11 - Why Elixir has an edge right now 45:21 - Patch windows in the AI era 47:11 - Can a startup stop a nation state? 50:06 - Securing your Elixir app with AI 57:17 - Letting AI patch production live 1:01:38 - Learning security as a developer 1:03:42 - Why small companies should skip bug bounties 1:04:54 - Insecure MCPs and AI assistants 1:10:14 - Verifying beneficiaries in Killswitch 1:12:36 - Q&A: Simulating catastrophic events 1:13:25 - Q&A: Learning ethical hacking with AI 1:16:22 - Kids, social media, and regulation 1:23:17 - Q&A: Are garbage collected languages safer? 1:27:26 - Where to find Michael Resources Mentioned: - Securing Hex: https://paraxial.io/blog/hex-pentest?utm_source=elixir-mentor - PortSwigger Web Security Academy: https://portswigger.net/web-security?utm_source=elixir-mentor - The Web Application Hacker's Handbook (2nd ed.) - Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Connect with Michael: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaellubas?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io on X: https://x.com/paraxialio?utm_source=elixir-mentor Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Adam Gusky, solo founder of Blawgy, on how businesses get recommended by ChatGPT and other AI tools, and what technical founders get wrong about marketing. Adam went from a college wrestling meme page and 30 side projects to quitting his job, selling Blawgy as a hand-built service, watching it churn, and rebuilding it into a product agencies now run for their clients. We get into SEO vs AEO, whether a post every day still works, and why most people will buy software instead of vibe coding it. I share how customers are finding Killswitch through AI answers, the Grok Bot team behind its marketing, and the partner program I'm building with attorneys and financial advisors. 00:00 - Introduction 02:19 - A college meme page and 30 side projects 04:05 - What Blawgy does 04:51 - Is SEO dead? SEO vs AEO and GEO 07:18 - How long before it works 10:34 - FoodBuddy and the menu item calorie play 12:21 - Agent readiness and llms.txt 15:23 - Customers finding Killswitch through AI 18:35 - Quitting the job to build Blawgy 22:12 - From hand-built service to real product 24:26 - Guardrails and multi-pass quality checks 26:17 - The Blawgy pixel and refreshing old posts 33:30 - Why people buy software instead of vibe coding it 38:37 - Handoff plans for solo founders 45:23 - Blawgy's stack, AI coding tools, and Tmux 54:06 - Marketing Killswitch with Grok Bots 56:31 - CAPTCHAs, bots, and AI slop on social 58:48 - A partner program for attorneys and advisors 1:01:09 - Local cold outreach that gets replies 1:03:02 - Why Blawgy sells to agencies 1:09:50 - Tiered pricing and finding agencies with Apollo 1:13:23 - SEO agencies, backlinks, and a cold email experiment 1:16:34 - Is a post every day overkill? 1:19:08 - Building an AI podcast producer 1:27:42 - Where to find Adam Resources Mentioned: - Blawgy: https://blawgy.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - MyFoodBuddy: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/myfoodbuddy/id6505124191?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Is It Agent Ready: https://isitagentready.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Connect with Adam: - X/Twitter: https://x.com/adamc0dez?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Blawgy on X: https://x.com/blawgyseo?utm_source=elixir-mentor Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Brice Ayres, founder of Axio Intelligence, on fractional engineering and what changes when one senior engineer can run a team of AI agents. Brice went from the Army and a 3.7 million follower Facebook cause to finding Elixir at Topgolf, leading engineering orgs, and going out on his own. We get into managing agents like an engineering org, whether you still need to read every line, and why Ash keeps LLMs on the rails. I share how a team of Grok Bots handles marketing, support, and QA for Killswitch, and we close with Brice's playbook for cutting cloud costs. 00:00 - Introduction 02:51 - Web dev class, the Army, and a viral nonprofit 08:38 - Finding Elixir at Topgolf 13:00 - What is fractional engineering? 16:10 - Vibe coding and why engineers still matter 24:03 - Think like an engineering manager 26:32 - Reviewing AI code, Ash, and established patterns 29:55 - Offmic, a live AI podcast producer 35:18 - Running agents like an engineering org 40:51 - Read-only agents in prod and self-healing infra 42:05 - A Polymarket bot with agent consensus 47:06 - Marketing Killswitch with Grok Bots 52:06 - Lighthouse scores and agentic browsing 56:13 - Getting found by LLMs 59:27 - Order with Surf: agentic food ordering 1:02:48 - Agent QA and local testing with K3s and Floci 1:05:40 - Data labeling, synthetic data, and edge AI 1:08:55 - Nerves, Peridio, and Avocado OS 1:11:47 - Bot traffic, analytics, and self-hosting 1:16:00 - Hardware stories and real-world edge cases 1:26:24 - When engineers ship faster than you can plan 1:29:10 - Monoliths, Postgres scaling, and ETS 1:36:40 - Where to find Brice 1:37:44 - Cutting cloud costs: logging and AZ traffic Resources Mentioned: - Axio Intelligence: https://axiointelligence.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Grok Bot: https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Connect with Brice: - X/Twitter: https://x.com/briceayres?utm_source=elixir-mentor - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briceayres/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

In this episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast, I step a little outside the BEAM to talk with Francesco Ciulla, Head of DevRel at Zerops. Francesco came up as a Rust developer and content creator with a 300,000-subscriber YouTube channel, and we get into the problem every builder runs into: getting developers to actually adopt what you ship. Francesco shares how he went from a corporate developer role at the European Space Agency to going independent, building an audience, and publishing his own Rust book. We talk about why distribution matters as much as the work itself, how public speaking changed him, and what being a developer looks like in 2026 with AI in the mix. From there we get into developer relations directly. Francesco explains what the job actually is, why you can't advocate for a product you don't believe in, and how he builds credibility for something he didn't write. He breaks down what Zerops does as a platform, how it compares to running things on GCP, and where developers fall off between signing up and getting real value. We also cover building a brand by declaring it and not stopping, why negative comments are a sign your audience is growing, language tribalism in tech, the risks of shipping vibe-coded projects without thinking about security, and what it takes to run Elixir on Zerops. A useful conversation for anyone trying to get a tool, a project, or themselves in front of developers. Resources Mentioned: - Zerops:https://zerops.io Connect with Francesco: - X/Twitter:https://x.com/FrancescoCiull4 - Website:https://francescociulla.com Sponsors: - BEAMOps:https://beamops.co.uk - Paraxial.io:https://paraxial.io SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor:https://elixirmentor.com

Jason Allum returns to the Elixir Mentor Podcast to talk about Beadwork, his filesystem-native, git-synced issue tracker built for AI coding agents. With 40 years of building software and cleaning up other people's messes, Jason has a sharp read on where agentic coding falls apart. The conversation starts with Beads, the ticketing tool that inspired Beadwork, and why it eventually devolved into slop as it grew. Jason explains how coding agents lose the thread on long tasks through compaction and drift, and how a clean queue of tickets keeps an agent moving toward the right outcome instead of stitching back together the very thing it was told to tear out. From there we get into how Beadwork is built: a git-synced design backed by an orphan branch that sidesteps the merge conflicts that made earlier tools painful for teams and work trees. Jason walks through breaking large changes into epics and issues, pausing the agent to catch drift, and the parts of the job an agent still can't do, like architecture decisions, taste, and judgment. We also cover raising the quality bar on agent output, the efficiency argument around tokens, multi-project and team workflows, and the prompts Jason reaches for to get better plans. If you write code alongside an agent every day, this one is full of practical, common-sense workflow advice you can put to use right away. Resources Mentioned: - Beadwork:https://github.com/jallum/beadwork - Bedrock (from last time):https://github.com/bedrock-kv/bedrock Connect with Jason: - X/Twitter:https://x.com/mullaj - GitHub:https://github.com/jallum Sponsors: - BEAMOps:https://beamops.co.uk - Paraxial.io:https://paraxial.io SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor:https://elixirmentor.com

In this episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast, I talk with Tjaco Oostdijk, a drummer turned Elixir developer now working at DPG Media, one of the largest media companies in the Netherlands. Tjaco played drums professionally from the age of seven and has taught for 22 years, before landing in software through a music distribution company writing Ruby and eventually moving to Elixir nearly a decade ago. We get into what it takes to keep Elixir running inside a large enterprise. DPG adopted Elixir after a high-traffic Ruby service fell over at scale, and Tjaco describes the reality of working in a locked-down environment standardized on Kotlin, using Copilot with Anthropic models while waiting for Claude Code to be approved. He also talks about the colleagues who stay skeptical of AI tooling and why that skepticism can be healthy. The heart of the conversation is muziekles.app, the application Tjaco built for Dutch music teachers to run their entire teaching practice, from year-long scheduling and student accounts to homework and assignments. He explains why he deliberately keeps payments out of the product, how he thinks about onboarding teachers, and the build process using Phoenix, Ash, Claude Code, and Tidewave. We also compare notes on shipping side projects fast, multi-tenancy in Ash, and the differences between hardware and software work. If you are building with Elixir inside a company that hasn't standardized on it, or shipping a side project with AI tooling, this conversation is full of practical, hard-won lessons from someone doing both at once. Connect with Tjaco: - Website:https://drumusician.com - X / Twitter:https://x.com/drumusician - GitHub:https://github.com/drumusician - LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjaco-oostdijk Resources Mentioned: - muziekles.app:https://muziekles.app - Tidewave:https://tidewave.ai - Vocablo:https://vocabloapp.com - Kabisa:https://kabisa.nl Sponsors: - BEAMOps:https://beamops.co.uk - Paraxial.io:https://paraxial.io SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor:https://elixirmentor.com

Peter Ullrich returns to talk about a CVE hunt across the most-downloaded Hex packages, run with Claude Code on Opus 4.7. After ElixirConf EU pulled him into AI security, he started pointing Opus at popular libraries day and night, and within half an hour of his first serious attempt he found the Decimal vulnerability, where raising 10 to a huge power can blow up an application's memory. We get into what separates a real CVE from noise, how CVSS scoring works, and why reachability matters so much, since a flaw in Phoenix's default config matters far more than a crash in a function nobody can call. Peter also walks through the process he runs with the EEF: verifying each issue, getting a second pair of eyes, coordinating a fix, and getting a number issued through a CNA, without sending slop reports to maintainers. We also touch on regulation and breach reporting. We also cover how Opus compares to Mythos, why Peter keeps coming back to Claude, his first impressions of Opus 4.8, and the economics, with a simple scan costing about $10 in API tokens. He also shares his Session Watcher plugin, an update on Killswitch and its browser-side encryption, thoughts on AEO, and how he uses dev containers to sandbox coding agents. Resources Mentioned: Peter's blog post: peterullrich.com/what-the-cvePeter's prompts: gistScrutineer: github.com/alpha-omega-security/scrutineerDecimal advisory: GHSA-rhv4-8758-jx7vEEF CNA published CVEs: cna.erlef.org/cvesEEF CNA security policy: cna.erlef.org/security-policyResponsible disclosure guidelines: security.erlef.orgAnthropic article: red.anthropic.comConnect with Peter: Website: peterullrich.comGitHub: github.com/pjullrichLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pjullrichBluesky: @peterullrich.comSponsors: BEAMOps: beamops.co.ukParaxial.io: paraxial.ioSUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR Elixir Mentor: elixirmentor.com

In this episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast, I sit down with Jason Allum, creator of Bedrock and Beadwork and a 40-year veteran of computing, to talk about Bedrock: an embedded, distributed key-value store for Elixir with guarantees that go beyond ACID. Jason walks through the problem Bedrock solves, keeping distributed state consistent when the same data is read and written across many nodes. We get into why the BEAM's decades-old ideas map cleanly onto today's AI and agent workloads, how Bedrock borrows its architecture from FoundationDB, and what serializable transactions actually buy you over plain ACID. From there we dig into the machinery: log servers versus storage servers, the five-second version window and MVCC, letting it crash with supervision-tree thinking across a cluster, and how rows can live as values while indexes become keys. Jason also covers running distributed jobs with leases and what it takes to swap Postgres out for Bedrock. Along the way Jason makes the case that none of this is magic, that the real wins come from understanding your machine and the shape of your data. We finish on Beadwork, his lightweight system for managing agent tickets directly in git. If you build with Elixir or care about distributed databases, there's a lot here to chew on. Connect with Jason: - X/Twitter:https://x.com/mullaj - GitHub:https://github.com/jallum Projects: - Bedrock:https://github.com/bedrock-kv/bedrock - Beadwork:https://github.com/jallum/beadwork Resources Mentioned: - Notes on the FoundationDB paper:https://uvdn7.github.io/notes-on-the-foundationdb-paper/ - FoundationDB architecture:https://apple.github.io/foundationdb/architecture.html - Raft consensus algorithm (GeeksforGeeks):https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/system-design/raft-consensus-algorithm/ - The Raft Consensus Algorithm:https://raft.github.io/ Sponsors: - BEAMOps:https://beamops.co.uk - Paraxial.io:https://paraxial.io - Jido (Elixir AI Collective Discord):https://agentjido.xyz/discord SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor:https://elixirmentor.com

Michael Lubas, CEO of Paraxial.io and my first-ever guest, returns to talk about AI's dual role in cybersecurity: finding vulnerabilities and writing the code that creates them. We open with the Hex package manager penetration test Paraxial ran under the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation's Aegis initiative, funded through Alpha Omega. Michael caught a remote code execution bug before it shipped. From there we cover GitHub Actions supply chain attacks, why every maintainer should run zizmor, and campaigns that target release pipelines instead of application source. Then the AI inflection point. The EEF's CNA issued nine CVEs in all of 2025 and is on track for well over a hundred in 2026, driven by researchers like Peter Ullrich using AI to find bugs already sitting in source code. Firefox went from about 20 valid bug reports a month to over 400 in April 2026. Michael argues defenders without state-of-the-art models are at a structural disadvantage, and we get into why bug bounty programs are collapsing under AI-generated noise, something I saw firsthand with Killswitch. We close with the practical side: what a real pentest costs, when Claude Code helps solo developers, and the common Elixir gotchas, including binary term deserialization, SSRF, dynamic atom creation, and staying inside Ecto's default query syntax. Plus Paraxial vs. Sobelow and what SOC 2 actually covers. Resources Mentioned: - Securing Hex (Paraxial blog): https://paraxial.io/blog/hex-pentest?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Hex security audit report: https://hex.pm/reports/2026/paraxial.pdf?utm_source=elixir-mentor - EEF CNA: https://cna.erlef.org/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Hardening Firefox with Claude: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/05/behind-the-scenes-hardening-firefox/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - What the CVE? (Peter Ullrich): https://peterullrich.com/what-the-cve?utm_source=elixir-mentor Connect with Michael: - Website: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - X/Twitter: https://x.com/paraxialio Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Jido, Elixir AI Collective Discord: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor Support Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor

In this episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast, I chat with Vasilis Spilka, Head of Software Development at Teacherspace, about building agentic software as a solo developer, the pairing of Ash and LLMs, and what it takes to ship a startup side project alongside a day job. Vasilis shares his path from Ruby on Rails in 2014 to nearly a decade of Elixir work across fintech, supply chain, and ad tech. We talk through Teacherspace's recent acquisition, the challenges of integrating with legacy Danish education contractors, and the three pivots it took to land on a working product. We spend a good chunk of the episode on Ash: why its unique DSL and introspection make it unusually strong with LLMs, how Spark lets you build your own DSLs, and why usage rules plus Igniter are a game-changer for library authors. Vasilis walks through his Claude Code workflow, the sculpting approach he uses for prototypes, and where he still won't let the LLM near — system design and API keys. The conversation also covers Communities, his local-first social platform; the paperclip-style autonomous company idea he's exploring with ash_typescript; whether LLMs actually understand anything; and the unglamorous reality of getting a consumer product off the ground through networking and volunteering. We close with practical tips on prompt phrasing and skill-file tweaks that meaningfully change output quality. Resources Mentioned: - Ash Framework: https://ash-hq.org - Tidewave: https://tidewave.ai - Igniter: https://hexdocs.pm/igniter - ash_typescript: https://github.com/ash-project/ash_typescript Connect with Vasilis: - X/Twitter: https://x.com/vasspilka - GitHub: https://github.com/vasspilka Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io - Jido (Elixir AI Collective Discord): https://agentjido.xyz/discord SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com

In this episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast, I sit down with Luca Corti, CTO at Sibill, a Milano-based fintech startup building cash flow management software for Italian small and medium businesses. Luca walks through his path from the early days of the internet at a small ISP in Milano to discovering functional programming at a major Italian telco—and why Elixir clicked for him immediately after years of fighting mutable state in OOP. Luca shares how he joined Sibill with an existing Python and TypeScript MVP, made the case for Elixir as the stack to rebuild on, and navigated integration with open banking APIs and Italy's national electronic invoicing system (SDI). We cover bank sync scheduling with Broadway and message queues, scaling a venture-backed engineering team to 40, and how fintech requirements around data privacy shape day-to-day engineering decisions. The conversation goes deep on the BEAM's real superpower—fault tolerance and resilience over raw concurrency—and Luca's hands-on approach to learning by building: an HTTP/2 server in Elixir a decade ago, and more recently using AI to help implement an HTTP/3 library. We also discuss hiring into an Elixir codebase, the challenges of selling SaaS to Italian SMBs accustomed to on-premises software, and a grounded take on AI tooling—useful, with clear limits, and nowhere close to replacing experienced engineers. Resources Mentioned: - Sibill: https://sibill.com - ankh (HTTP/2 library): https://github.com/lucacorti/ankh - lapin (AMQP client): https://github.com/lucacorti/lapin Connect with Luca: - X/Twitter: https://x.com/lucacorti - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucacorti - GitHub: https://github.com/lucacorti Sponsors: - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io - Jido (Elixir AI Collective Discord): https://agentjido.xyz/discord SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com

Steve Domino is the co-founder and CTO of Crew, a fintech startup building what he calls the most powerful checking account in the world — one with programmable automation rules, a family-scoped AI financial assistant, and zero of the fees that make traditional banking frustrating. He came up through startups, spent time at Divvy before its Bill.com acquisition, and brought his Elixir experience directly into Crew's foundation. We cover a lot of ground on the product side: how Crew's "Autopilot" rules engine lets users program their money (and the recursion checks it took to make that safe), why Crew consolidated savings and checking into a single account, how the team handles high-value deposits without physical branches, and what's coming — business accounts, wills and trusts, family investing, and a credit card designed to work like a debit card. Steve also talks through the challenge of projecting bills years into the future to keep balance reservations accurate, and how building and using your own product surfaces problems fast. On the Elixir side, Steve talks about why fintech is a natural fit for the BEAM — Crew decisions on card transactions in under 250 milliseconds — and how Oban became central to their reliability story when partner services go down. He shares what drew him to Elixir personally (pattern matching, the pipe operator, the with block), reflects on the Utah Elixir ecosystem that Divvy and Podium helped build, and explains how Penny, their AI financial assistant, is scoped per family so it can never reach outside a user's own data. We also spend time on career and engineering culture: Steve's take on the "Extreme Ownership" mindset that shaped how he grew into a leadership role, why he asks candidates to design something they'd actually build at Crew instead of solving puzzles, and his honest concern that developers leaning entirely on AI may lose the ability to think critically about architecture. Good conversation throughout. Resources Mentioned: - Extreme Ownership (book): Amazon - Oban: oban.pro Connect with Steve: - Crew: trycrew.com - LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/steve-domino SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: elixirmentor.com SPONSORS - Paraxial.io — Elixir-first app security: paraxial.io - BEAMOps — Scalable Elixir infrastructure: beamops.co.uk - Jido — Elixir AI Collective Discord: agentjido.xyz/discord