LoomEx

An Elixir framework for building AI agents from OTP primitives.

Status: Active Development — LoomEx is being developed and iterated on. APIs may change. Contributions and feedback welcome.

What is LoomEx?

LoomEx weaves conversations, tool calls, and reasoning into coherent AI agents using Elixir's OTP building blocks (GenServer, Task.Supervisor, ETS). Instead of importing a heavyweight framework, you compose agents from simple behaviours and let the BEAM handle concurrency, fault tolerance, and streaming.

Core idea: Define an agent (system prompt + tools + model), call LoomEx.run/3, get streaming results with automatic multi-step tool execution.

defmodule MyAgent do
  use LoomEx.Agent

  def system_prompt(_ctx), do: "You are a helpful coding assistant."
  def tools, do: [LoomEx.Tools.Bash, LoomEx.Tools.ReadFile, LoomEx.Tools.Grep]
  def model, do: "fireworks/accounts/fireworks/models/kimi-k2p5"
end

{:ok, result} = LoomEx.run(MyAgent, [LoomEx.Message.user("Find all TODO comments")],
  sink: fn {:text_delta, d} -> IO.write(d); _ -> :ok end)

Features

• Agent behaviour — Declarative agent definition with callbacks for system prompt, tools, model, temperature, max steps, error handling
• Automatic tool loop — LLM calls tool -> execute -> feed result back -> LLM continues -> ... until done. Parallel tool execution via Task.Supervisor
• Streaming-first — Every token streams through pluggable Sinks (callback function, process message, Phoenix SSE)
• Provider-agnostic — Any OpenAI-compatible API via model string routing ("provider/model-name")
• 7 built-in tools — bash, read_file, write_file, edit_file, grep, glob, human (with more planned)
• Phoenix integration — LoomEx.Phoenix.Plug.stream_agent/4 for one-line SSE streaming with AI SDK v2 protocol compatibility
• GenServer agents — Long-lived multi-turn conversations via LoomEx.start_agent/2 and LoomEx.call/3
• Context management — Auto-compaction when messages exceed context window, preserving tool call/result pairs
• Model registry — Fetches metadata for 4,000+ models from models.dev (context window, pricing, capabilities)
• Retry with backoff — Exponential backoff for transient errors (429, 503, connection failures)
• Telemetry — Structured events for agent lifecycle, LLM calls, tool execution, context compaction
• Standalone CLI — Ship as a single binary via Burrito (9MB, zero dependencies)

Installation

Add LoomEx to your mix.exs:

# From GitHub
{:loom_ex, github: "lulucatdev/loom_ex"}

# Or as a path dependency during development
{:loom_ex, path: "../loom_ex"}

Configure a provider in config/runtime.exs:

config :loom_ex,
  providers: %{
    fireworks: %{
      api_key: System.get_env("FIREWORKS_API_KEY"),
      base_url: "https://api.fireworks.ai/inference/v1/chat/completions"
    },
    openrouter: %{
      api_key: System.get_env("OPENROUTER_API_KEY"),
      base_url: "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions"
    }
  }

Quick Start

Define an Agent

defmodule MyApp.MathAgent do
  use LoomEx.Agent

  @impl true
  def system_prompt(_ctx), do: "You are a math tutor. Use the calculator when needed."

  @impl true
  def tools, do: [MyApp.Tools.Calculator]

  @impl true
  def model, do: "fireworks/accounts/fireworks/models/kimi-k2p5"
end

Define a Tool

defmodule MyApp.Tools.Calculator do
  use LoomEx.Tool

  @impl true
  def name, do: "calculator"

  @impl true
  def description, do: "Evaluate a math expression."

  @impl true
  def parameters do
    %{
      type: "object",
      properties: %{
        expr: %{type: "string", description: "Math expression, e.g. '6 * 7'"}
      },
      required: ["expr"]
    }
  end

  @impl true
  def execute(%{"expr" => expr}, _ctx) do
    {result, _} = Code.eval_string(expr)
    {:ok, %{"result" => result}}
  end
end

Run

# Single execution with streaming
{:ok, result} = LoomEx.run(MyApp.MathAgent, [LoomEx.Message.user("What is 123 * 456?")],
  sink: fn
    {:text_delta, d} -> IO.write(d)
    {:tool_call_complete, tc} -> IO.puts("\n[Tool: #{tc.name}]")
    _ -> :ok
  end)

# result.messages  — full conversation history
# result.steps     — number of LLM calls
# result.usage     — %{"prompt_tokens" => ..., "completion_tokens" => ...}

Multi-turn Conversations

{:ok, pid} = LoomEx.start_agent(MyApp.MathAgent)
{:ok, _} = LoomEx.call(pid, "What is 2 + 2?")
{:ok, _} = LoomEx.call(pid, "Now multiply that by 10")
messages = LoomEx.get_messages(pid)  # full history

Phoenix Controller

defmodule MyAppWeb.ChatController do
  use MyAppWeb, :controller

  def chat(conn, %{"messages" => messages}) do
    {conn, _result} = LoomEx.Phoenix.Plug.stream_agent(conn, MyApp.ChatAgent, messages)
    conn
  end
end

The response streams as Server-Sent Events compatible with the Vercel AI SDKuseChat hook.

Built-in Tools

Use them by listing in your agent's tools/0:

def tools, do: [LoomEx.Tools.Bash, LoomEx.Tools.ReadFile, LoomEx.Tools.Grep]

CLI Binary

LoomEx can be packaged as a standalone CLI via Burrito:

# Build (requires Zig: brew install zig)
MIX_ENV=prod mix release

# Run
./burrito_out/loom_ex_macos_arm64 "What is 2+2?"
./burrito_out/loom_ex_macos_arm64 chat --tools bash,grep "Find all TODOs"
./burrito_out/loom_ex_macos_arm64 chat -i --model anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6

# Pipe support
cat file.ex | ./loom_ex "summarize this code"
git diff | ./loom_ex "review this diff"

Agent Callbacks

Architecture

LoomEx.run/3 or LoomEx.start_agent/2 + LoomEx.call/3
  |
  v
LoomEx.Agent.Runner (core loop)
  |
  +-- LoomEx.Context.maybe_compact()     auto-compress long conversations
  +-- LoomEx.LLM.Retry.chat_stream()    exponential backoff retry
  |     +-- LoomEx.LLM.Client           Req + SSEParser streaming
  |     +-- LoomEx.LLM.Provider         model string -> provider config
  |     +-- LoomEx.Models (ETS)         models.dev metadata cache
  +-- Tool execution                   Task.Supervisor (parallel)
  +-- LoomEx.Sink                        streaming output
  |     +-- Callback (fn)
  |     +-- Process (pid message)
  |     +-- LoomEx.Phoenix.SSESink       AI SDK v2 SSE protocol
  +-- LoomEx.Telemetry                   structured observability events

Telemetry Events

Attach the default logger for development:

LoomEx.Telemetry.attach_default_logger()

Design Principles

• OTP-native — Agents are GenServers, tools execute via Task.Supervisor, model registry lives in ETS. No alien abstractions.
• Streaming-first — Every LLM token streams to the consumer in real-time. Backpressure handled naturally by the BEAM.
• Transparent message chain — Messages are explicit parameters, never hidden behind framework state. You always know what the LLM sees.
• Provider-agnostic — Any OpenAI-compatible API. Model string format: "provider/model-name".
• Composable — Agents can delegate to sub-agents via tools. Tools are plain modules implementing a behaviour.

Inspirations

• pi-mono — Minimalist agent framework philosophy, extension system
• Legion — Elixir agent framework, GenServer agent lifecycle, Vault pattern
• Vercel AI SDK — Streaming protocol, useChat hook, maxSteps
• Why Elixir/OTP Doesn't Need an Agent Framework — Use OTP primitives directly
• models.dev — Model metadata registry

License

MIT