ExLLM

A unified Elixir client for Large Language Models with intelligent test caching, comprehensive provider support, and advanced developer tooling.

⚠️ Alpha Quality Software: This library is in early development. APIs may change without notice until version 1.0.0 is released. Use in production at your own risk.

What’s New Since v0.7.0

v0.8.1 - Documentation & Code Quality

• 📖 Comprehensive API Documentation: Complete public API reference with examples and clear separation from internal modules
• 🧹 Zero Compilation Warnings: Clean codebase with all warnings resolved (Logger.warn → Logger.warning, unreachable clauses)
• 🏗️ Enhanced Documentation Structure: Organized guides and references with ExDoc integration

v0.8.0 - Advanced Streaming & Telemetry

• 🚀 Production-Ready Streaming Infrastructure: Memory-efficient circular buffers, flow control, and intelligent batching
• 📊 Comprehensive Telemetry System: Complete observability with telemetry events for all operations
• ⚡ Enhanced Streaming Performance: Reduced system calls and graceful degradation for slow consumers
• 🔒 Memory Safety: Fixed-size buffers prevent unbounded memory growth

v0.7.1 - Documentation System

• 📚 Complete ExDoc Configuration: Organized documentation structure with guides and references
• 🎯 24 Mix Test Aliases: Targeted testing commands for providers, capabilities, and test types

Features

🔗 Core API

• Unified Interface: Single API for 14+ LLM providers and 300+ models
• Streaming Support: Real-time streaming responses with error recovery
• Session Management: Built-in conversation state tracking and persistence
• Function Calling: Unified tool use interface across all providers
• Multimodal Support: Vision, audio, and document processing capabilities

📊 Developer Experience

• Intelligent Test Caching: 25x faster integration tests with smart response caching
• Comprehensive Test Tagging: Semantic organization with provider, capability, and requirement tags
• Mix Test Aliases: 24 targeted testing commands (e.g., mix test.anthropic, mix test.streaming)
• Automatic Requirement Checking: Dynamic test skipping with meaningful error messages
• Cost Tracking: Automatic cost calculation and token usage monitoring

🎯 Advanced Features

• Complete Gemini API: All 15 Gemini APIs including Live API with WebSocket support
• OAuth2 Authentication: Full OAuth2 support for provider APIs requiring user auth
• Structured Outputs: Schema validation and retries via Instructor integration
• Model Discovery: Query and compare capabilities across all providers
• Response Caching: Production-ready caching with TTL, fallback strategies, and analytics
• Type Safety: Comprehensive typespecs and structured data throughout

Supported Providers

ExLLM supports 14 providers with access to 300+ models:

• Anthropic Claude - Claude 4, 3.7, 3.5, and 3 series models
• OpenAI - GPT-4.1, o1 reasoning models, GPT-4o, and GPT-3.5 series
• AWS Bedrock - Multi-provider access (Anthropic, Amazon Nova, Meta Llama, etc.)
• Google Gemini - Gemini 2.5, 2.0, and 1.5 series with multimodal support
• OpenRouter - Access to 300+ models from multiple providers
• Groq - Ultra-fast inference with Llama 4, DeepSeek R1, and more
• X.AI - Grok models with web search and reasoning capabilities
• Mistral AI - Mistral Large, Pixtral, and specialized code models
• Perplexity - Search-enhanced language models
• Ollama - Local model runner (any model in your installation)
• LM Studio - Local model server with OpenAI-compatible API
• Bumblebee - Local model inference with Elixir/Nx
• Mock Adapter - For testing and development

Installation

Add ex_llm to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:ex_llm, "~> 0.8.1"},
    
    # Optional hardware acceleration backends (choose one):
    {:exla, "~> 0.7", optional: true},
    
    # Optional: For Apple Silicon Metal acceleration
    {:emlx, github: "elixir-nx/emlx", branch: "main", optional: true}
  ]
end

Quick Start

1. Configuration

Set your API keys as environment variables:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="your-anthropic-key"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-openai-key"
export GROQ_API_KEY="your-groq-key"
# ... other provider keys as needed

2. Basic Usage

# Single completion
{:ok, response} = ExLLM.chat(:anthropic, [
  %{role: "user", content: "Explain quantum computing in simple terms"}
])

IO.puts(response.content)
# Cost automatically tracked: response.cost

# Streaming response
ExLLM.chat_stream(:openai, [
  %{role: "user", content: "Write a short story"}
], fn chunk ->
  IO.write(chunk.delta)
end)

# With session management
{:ok, session} = ExLLM.Session.new(:groq)
{:ok, session, response} = ExLLM.Session.chat(session, "Hello!")
{:ok, session, response} = ExLLM.Session.chat(session, "How are you?")

# Multimodal with vision
{:ok, response} = ExLLM.chat(:gemini, [
  %{role: "user", content: [
    %{type: "text", text: "What's in this image?"},
    %{type: "image", image: %{data: base64_image, media_type: "image/jpeg"}}
  ]}
])

3. Testing with Caching

# Run integration tests with automatic caching
mix test.anthropic --include live_api

# Manage test cache
mix ex_llm.cache stats
mix ex_llm.cache clean --older-than 7d

Documentation

📚 Quick Start Guide - Get up and running in 5 minutes
📖 User Guide - Comprehensive documentation of all features
🏗️ Architecture Guide - Clean layered architecture and namespace organization
🔧 Logger Guide - Debug logging and troubleshooting
⚡ Provider Capabilities - Feature comparison across providers
🧪 Testing Guide - Comprehensive testing system with semantic tagging and caching

Key Topics Covered in the User Guide

• Configuration: Environment variables, config files, and provider setup
• Chat Completions: Messages, parameters, and response handling
• Streaming: Real-time responses with error recovery and coordinator
• Session Management: Conversation state and persistence
• Function Calling: Tool use and structured interactions across providers
• Vision & Multimodal: Image, audio, and document processing
• Cost Tracking: Automatic cost calculation and token estimation
• Error Handling: Retry logic and error recovery strategies
• Test Caching: Intelligent response caching with 25x speed improvements
• Test Organization: Semantic tagging and targeted test execution
• Model Discovery: Query available models and capabilities
• OAuth2 Integration: Complete OAuth2 flow for Gemini and other providers

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Support

• 📖 Documentation: User Guide
• 🐛 Issues: GitHub Issues
• 💬 Discussions: GitHub Discussions